TAINE'S W^ORKS. Uniform Library Edition. i2mo, Green Cloth, $2.50 per volume. ENGLISH LITERATURE. 2 vols. ITALY, ROME, AND NAPLES. ITALY, FLORENCE, AND VENICE, ON INTELLIGENCE. 2 vols. LECTURES ON ART. First Series. Contain- ing The Philosophy of Art ; The Ideal in Art. LECTURES ON ART. Second Series. Con- taining The Philosophy of Art in Italy ; Tlie Phi- losophy of Art in the Netherlands ; The Philosophy of Art in Greece. NOTES ON ENGLAND. With Portrait. NOTES ON PARIS. A TOUR THROUGH THE PYRENEES. (The Same. Illustrated by Gustave Dore. 8vo, cloth, $10.00; full morocco, $20.00.) THE ANCIENT REGIME. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, 3 vols. HENRY HOLT & CO., Publishers, New York. ITALY FLORENCE AND VENICE FROM THE FRENCH OF H . T A I N E BY J. D U R A N D Fourth Rdition N E \V YORK HENPwY HOLT AND COMPANY Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by LEYPOLDT & HOLT, la the Clerk's office of the District Court of the Un ted States foi ti- Southern District of New Yo k. • ^* • • • • .* • • • » • • • • • • • • • • «• • 1 • • • • • • • * • • • 9 4 # • 9> • • » • ••«■ • « • • « • « • « * * * »♦ * •••••i ■1 • • • • *• • • • c • • * ** • * • » • • » • * '.• « • • » * « «, *.♦ ».' ••• ^ -$ ^ ^ CONTENTS. BOOK I. PERUGIA AND ASSISI. CHAPTER I. FAai PKOM ROME TO PERUGIA.— THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA -THE APEN- NINES.— SCENERY 1 CHAPTER 11. PBBUGIA.- PRODUCTIONS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS OP THE EARLY RENAISSANCE.— MYSTIC ART.-FRA ANGELICO.— PERU- QINO.— LE CAMBIO.— THE VALLEY OP PERUGIA f CHAPTER III. A8SISI.— VILLAGES AND THE PEASANTRY.— THE THREE CHURCHES. —GIOTTO AND DANTE.— CONCORDANCE OF CIIltlSTIAN MYSTI- CISM WITH GOTHIC ART.— AN ENTHUSIASTIC IMAGINATION COMPATIBLE WITH BARBARISM It CHAPTER IV. POLITICAL CONDITION.— DIFFICULTIES AND RESOURCES.— DISPOSI- TION OP THE MIDDLE CLASS— PREDOMINANCE AND PROGRESS OP THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND LIBERAL PARTY.— SYMPATHY BETWEEN ITALY AND FRANCE.— INC0N\T:NIENCES AND AD- VANTAGES OF MODERN CENTRALIZATION 2S CHAPTER V. PROM PERUGIA TO SIENNA— ASPECT OF SIENNA.— TRANSITION FROM A REPUBLICAN TO A MONARCHICAL SYSTEM.- MEDIJi:- \AL MONUMENTS.— THE CATHEDRAL.— ITALIAN GOTHIC ARCH- ITECTURE.— NICHOLAS OP PISA.— EARLY SCULPTURE.— APPRE- CIATION OP FORM IN THE RENAISSANCE *. IV CONTENTS. CHAPTER VI. PAOI THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING AT SIENNA AND PISA.— CEEATI\'E EN- ERGY IN SOCIETY AND IN THE ARTS.— DUCCIO DA SIENNA.- SIMONE MEMMI.— THE LORENZETTL— MATTEO DA SIENNA.... if CHAPTER VII. FROM FLORENCE TO I'ISA.— SCENERY.— PISAN ARCHITECTURE.— THE DUOMO, LEANING TOWER, BAPIISTERY, AND CAMPO- SANTO.— PAINTINGS OP THE XIV. CENTURY.— PI ETRO D"OR\TE- TO.— SPINELLO SPINELLI, PIETRO LORENZETTI, AND THE OR- CAGNA.— RELATIONSHIP OP THE ART OF THE XIV. CENTURY TO ITS SOCIETY.— WHY ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT REMAINS STATIONARY 61 BOOK II. FLORENCE. CHAPTER I. BTREET SCENES.— FLORENTINE CHARACTER .. 71 CHAPTER II. THEATRES.— LITERATURE.— POLITICS.— IN WHAT RESPECT THE ITALIAN DIFFERS FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.— THE PEASANT IN RELATION TO THE NOBLE.— THE LAYMAN IN RE- LATION TO THE PRIEST... 76 CHAPTER III. THE PIAZZA.— REPUBLICAN SOCIETY IN THE MIDDLE AGES.— STREET FRAYS AND FAMILY FEUDS.— THE PALAZZO-VECCHIO. CONTRAST BETWEEN MEDIJBVAL AND RENAISSANCE MONU MENTS.— THE DUOMO.— MIXED AND ORIGINAL CHARACTER OP THE ARCHITECTURE.— THE CAMPANILE.— THE BAPTISTERY.-- ITALY REMAINS LATIN.— PRECOCITY OP THE RENAISSANCE.- BRUNELLESCHI, DONATELLO, AND GHIBERTI 84 BOOK III. THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. CHAPTER I. THE EAELY PAINTERS. — THE BYZANTINES. — CIMABUE. —GIOTTO.— FIRST EVIDENCES OF THE LAIC, ITALIAN, AND PAGAN SPIRIT.— THE SUCCESSORS OP GIOTTO.— ART AT THIS EPOCH REPRESENTBD IDEAS AND NOT OBJECTS » CONTENTS. f CHAPTER II. PAQl niE FIFTEENTH CENTUItY.— TRA:^^SFOKMATION OP SOCIETY AND IDKAS.— PUBLIC PROSPERITY AND USEFUL INVENTIONS -LUX- UK lOUS TASTES.— MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF LIFE AND UAP- PINESS.-THE HUMANISTS.— THE POETS.-TIIE CARNIVAL.— A NF.W CAREER OPEN TO THE ARTS.-THE GOLDS]MITII. THE PRO- MOTER OF ART.— ART NO LONGER REPRESENTS IDEAS, BUT CREATURES.— PERSPECTRTS WITH PAOLO UCCELLO t08 CHAPTER in. PORTRAITURE OF ACTUAL FORM: MODELLING AND ANATOMY WITH ANTONIO POLLAIOLO AND VEROCCIIIO.— CREATION OF IDEAL FORM WITH MASACCIO.— ORIGINALITY AND LIMITS OF ART IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.— FRA FILIPPO LIPPI AND GHIRLANDAIJO.- THE SURVIVORS BOTTICELLI 12f. CHAPTER IV. THE CONVENT OF SAN MARCO.— BEATO ANGELICO.— HIS LIFE AND WORKS.— PROLONGATION OF MYSTIC SENTIMENT AND ART... 131 CHAPTER V. THE UFFIZJ COLLECTION.— THE TRIBUNE.— ANTIQUES, AND RE- NAISSANCE SCULPTURE.— DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GREEK ART AND TILE ART OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.— MICHAEL AN- GELO.— THE MEDICI CHAPEL 138 CHAPTER VI. riFE PITTI PALACE.— THE IVIEDICI MONARCHY.— MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OP THE COURT.— PROMENADES AMONG THE PAINT- ERS.— ANDREA DEL SARTO AND FRA BARTOLOMEO.— THE SPIRIT AND INPLUENCE OF FLORENCE m ITALY 151 BOOK lY. FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. CHAPTER I. PROM FLORENCE TO BOLOGNA.— THE AT ENNINES.— BOLOGNA.— STREETS AND FIGURES.— WOMEN AND THE YOUNG.— LOVE.- SAN DOMENICO.— THE TOMB OF SAN DOMENICO.— SAN PETRO KIO.— JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA.— JOHN OF BOLOGNA.— END OP THE RENAISSANCE la Vl CONTENTS. CHAPTER II. THE PINACOTHEA.— RAPHAEL'S ST. CECILIA.— THE CAKACCI.— STATE OF SOCIETY AND OF ART DURING THE CATHOLIC RES- TORATION.— DOMENICHINO, ALBANO AND GUIDO lIC CHAPTER III. FROM BOLOGNA TO RAVENNA.— LANDSCAPE.— PEASANTRY. -THE TOMB OF THEODORIC— RAVENNA.— BYZANTINE ARCHITECTURE. -SAN APOLLINARE AND ITS MOSAICS 178 CHAPTER IV. CHARACTER OF THE CIVILIZATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE.— CHANGE AND ABASEMENT OF THE SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SPIRIT.— SAN VTPALE. ITS ARCHITECTLUE AND MOSAICS.-JUSTINIAIT AND THEODORA.- THE TOMB OF PLACIDIA 18€ CHAPTER V. FROM BOLOGNA TO PADUA.— ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY.— PADUA.— STATE OF SOCIETY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY AND OF ART IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.— SANTA MARIA DELL' ARENE AND THE WORKS OF GIOTTO... 197 CHAPTER VI. PADUA, CONTINUED.— SA2T GUISTINA.— SAN ANTONIO.— THE SCULP- TORS AND DECORATORS OF THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES.— THE MUNICIPAL SYSTEM COMPARED WITH THE EXTENDED GOVERNMENTS OF MODERN TBIES— THE ADVAN- TAGES AND DRAWBACKS OF CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION.. 908 BOOK V. VENICE. CHAPTER I. FROM PADUA TO VENICE.— THE LAGUNES.— PROMENADE IN VEN ICE.— THE GRAND CANAL.— THE PIAZZA DI SAN MARCO.— THE DUCAL PALACE.—" VENICE, QUEEN," by PAUL VERONESE.— DAY AND NIGHT LANDSCAPES ON THE SEA.— SQUARES, STREETS, FIGURES AND CAFES SIV CONTENTS. VU CHAPTER IT. TAQI AJNCJENT VENICE. -PROLONGATION OF THE MUNICIPAL SYSTEM.— ORIGIN AIJTY AND RICHNESS OF INVENTION IN SMALL FREE STATES.— THE ItENAISSANCE OF ARCHITECa^LKE.— SAN ]\IARCO. -IMPORTATION AND TPw\NSFORMATION OF THE BYZANTINE STYLE.— MOSAICS AND SCUIiPTIJRES 881 CHAPTER III. BAN GIOVANNI E PAOLO.— I FIURI.— THE MAUSOLEUM OF GUAT- TEMAL ATA.— MONUMENTS OF THE DOGES.-TIIE SPIRIT OP DI- VERSE CENTURIES AS STAMPED ON SCULPTURE.— THE MIDDLE A(;ES, the RENAISSANCE, THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, AND THE MODERN EPOCH.— " ST. PETER MARTYR," BY TITIAN.— TIN- TORETTO 34S CHAPTER IV. PROMENADES.— SANTA-MARIA. DELL' ORTO.-SAN GIOBBE.— LA QUI- DECCA.-I GESUATI.-I GKSUITL— AIANNERS, CUSTOMS AND CHARACTERS.— MISERY.— PUBLIC SPIRIT.— IDLENESS AND REV- ERIE AT \^NICE 251 CHAPTER V. THE LATTER DAYS.— EPICUREANISM.— CANALETTI, GUARDI, LON- GIII, GOLDONI AND GOZZI.-THE CAKNIVAL.— LICENSE.— THE LIDO.-THE SEA.— THE TOWER OP SAN-MARCO.— THE CITY, THE WATER AND THE SANDS 2««J BOOK VI. VENETIAN ART. CHAPTER I. CLIMATE.— TEMPERAMENT.-ART, AN ABSTRACT OF LIFE.— MAN IN THE INTERVAL BETWEEN HEROIC AND DEGENERATE ERAS., rn CHAPTER IL I'HE J5ARLY PAINTERS.— ,10 HN BELLINI.-CARPACCIO. -VENETIAN SOCIETY IN THE SIXTEENTH CTiXTURY.— LT^TRESTP^MNED VO- LUPTUOUSNESS.-DOMESTIC EST.ABLISHMENT OP ARETINO.— SE^TIMENT OF ART.— COLOR INSTINCTS Wl ?m CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. PA OB TKE DUCAL PALACE.— CHAIiACTEES OF THE DAY.— THE ALLEGOR ICAL PAINTINGS OP VERONESE AND TINTORETTO.— THE RA.PE OF EUROFA 29< CHAPTER IV. TITIAN, Hie LIFE AND CHARACTER.— HIS WORKS IN THE ACAD- EMY.-" THE ASSL'MPTION OF THE VIRGIN," AND OTHERS.- SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE.—" THE SACRIFICE OP ABRAHAM." — " CALN AND ABEL."— THE WORKS OF BONLPAZIO, PALMA-VEC- CHIO AND VERONESE , 301 CHAPTER V. THE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OP TINTORETTO.— THE " MIRACLE OP ST. MARK."— THE SCUOLA OP SAN-ROCCO.— THE " CRUCIFIX- ION."— GENERAL IMPRESSIONS 31S BOOK VII. LOMBARDY. CHAPTER I. <^ERONA.— THE AMPmTHEATRE.—CHURCIIES.— LOMBARD STYLE OP ARCHITECTURE.— THE DUOMO.— SAN ZENONE.— THE SCALIGERS. -THE PIAZZA.— THE MUSEO 325 CHAPTER 11. LAGO DI GARDA.— MILAN.— STREETS AND CHARACTERS.— THE CA- THEDRAL.— MYSTIC FIGURES AND VEGETAL ANALOGIES OP THE GOTHIC— SAN AMBROGIO 948 CHAPTER III. THE LAST SUPPER OP LEONARDO DA VINCI.— CHARACTER OP IHS PERSONAGES.— CHARACTERISTICS OP HIS GENIUS.— HIS SCHOOL. — LUINL— THE BRERA MUSEE.— THE AMBROSIAN LIBRARY. . . . 35C CHAPTER IV. COMO AND THE LAKE.— SCENERY.— THE CATHEDRAL.— ITALIAN ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE IN THE Pli^TEENTH CEN- TURY 36] CONTENTS. a CHAPTER V. FROM COISIO TO LA(iO MAGGrlOKE.— DEVOTION.-EPICUREAMTSM -- THE I'EASANTiJY. HOURGEOIS AND NOr.T.ES.-l'()LITICAl> DISPO SITlOXS.-TilE NECE.SSITIES OF ITALY.-LAGO MAGOIORE.- ISOLA MADUE.-ISOLA BELLA. -SCENERY.— ART AND NATURE.- THK iLPS AND TUE SLMPLON Wl ITALY. » BOOK I. PERUGIA AND ASSISI. CHAPTEK I. ITROM ROME TO PERUGIA.— THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA.— THE APEK NINES.— SCENERY. I LEFT Eomo at five o'clock in the evening ; I had not yet seen this portion of the Campagna, and I will never see it again for my own pleasure. Always the same impression — that of an abandoned cemetery. Long monotonous hillocks succeed each other in interminable rows, like those seen on a battle-field when the great trenches are covered over in which the dead lie heaped. Not a tree, not a stream, not a hut. In two hours I saw but one round cabin, with a pointed roof, like those found amongst the savages. Even ruins are wanting. On this side there are no aque- ducts. At long intervals we encounter an ox-cart , every quarter of a league the sombre foliage of a stunted evergreen bristles up by the roadside, the sole living object, a forlorn straggler lost in the soli- tude. The only trace of man is the fences bordering the highway and traversing, far and wide, the undu- lating verdure, in order to confine the flocks during the season of pasturage. At present, however, all is barren, 3 PEKUGIA AND ASSIST. and the sky expands its divine cupola over the funereal waste with mournful, ironic serenity. The sun dechnes, and the fading azure, growing more limpid, tiQges its crystal with an imperceptible hue of emerald. No words can express this contrast between the eternal beauty of the sky and the irremediable desolation oi the soil. Yirgil, in the midst of Roman pomp, already first indicated the merciful contemplation of the gods, who, under Jupiter's roof, looked down amazed upon man's miseries and strifes."' I cannot rid my mind of the impression that here is the sepulchre of Eome, and of all the nations she de- stroyed — Italians, Carthaginians, Gauls, Spaniards, Greeks, Asiatics, barbarian populations and enlight- ened cities. Ail antiquity, indiscriminately, lies buried here under the monstrous city which devoured them, and which died of its surfeit. Every verdant undula- tion of the soil is, as it were, the grave of a distinct nation. Dajdight is gone. In the moonless night, the mis- erable post-houses, with their smoking lamps, appear suddenly, like the dw^ellings of the watchers of the dead. Heavy stone wails, begrimed arcades, shadowy depths with lank forms of horses vaguely discernible in them, strange, bronzed, sallow visages circulating around the harness and clanking chains, their gleam- ing eyes lit up with fever — all this fantastic disorder and grimacing in the midst of the darkness and chilly dampness falling around it like a pall, imparts to the nerves and heart a long sentiment of horror. The ghastly vision is completed by a lugubrious postilion, who, in an old tattered cap, eternally jumps about in the yellow light. The rays from the lantern fall on his back with a spectral tint. He is constantly writhing * •* Di Jo vis ill tectis iram mirantur inanem Amborum et tanlos mortalibus esse labores." THE APENNINES. 3 and twisting aroima in order to boat his nags, and you can see tlio fixed leer, the mechanical contraction of his meagre jaws. On awak(3ning, at early dawn, a river appears me- andering beneath its morning exhalations ; then ravines and bald slopes confusedly intermingled and ri\on by innumerable fissures, with courses of whi- tened stones rolled down into the hollows and on the declivities and, in the distance, lofty, dark, striated mountains. The fi-ontier is passed, and the Apen- nines commence. A bright sun illumines the sharp crags of their summits; the lungs breathes healthy atmosphere ; the land of pestilence is left behind. We have now come to a meagre soil, but one favorable to existence ; the country has a rigorous aspect, with gi;ind and striking features, serving to stamp on the minds of its children noble a^nd definite images without the body becoming sensualized by a too gToss and abundant nourishment. Heaths, barren rocks, with here and there a strip of rich aromatic pasturage, some stony fields, and olives everywhere — you might imagine yourseh in Provence. Everything, even these pale olive-trees, adds to the austerity of the landscape. Most of these trees have burst asunder, their tninks having split and separated into fragments, the parts being held together only by a suture : one might regard them as the damned in Dante undergoing the penalty of the sword, cleft in twain, and hewn and hacked on every side fi-om crow^n to heel and fi'om heel to crown. Their tortuous roots cHng to the rocks like despairing feet ; and the bodies, tormented with their w^ounds, writhe and recoil in theii' agony : distorted or distended they still live, and no declivity, or rock, or flood of winter, triumphs over their struggles and vitality. Tow^ard Narni the aspect changes ; the road runs winding up the mountain, the face of which is com- pletely covered with evergreens : these have sprung up 4 PERUGIA AND ASSIST. everywhere, even in tlie hollows and on inaccessible heights ; only a few walls of perpendicular rock have opposed their invasion. The mountain thus rises, round from the torrent below to the sky above, like a magnificent summer bouquet intact in the midst of win- ter. After leaving Narni the landscape becomes still more beautiful. It is a fertile plain ; fresh grain, elms wedded to vines, an extensive smiling garden, and all around high hills of a graver hue ; beyond, a circle of blue mountains fringed with snow. Soave austero is a phrase frequently recurring to one in the landscapes of Italy : the mountains impart nobleness to them, without, however, being too lofty ; the imagination is not overwhelmed by them ; they form amphitheatres and backgrounds to pictures, and are simply a natural architecture. Beneath them, varied cultures, numer- ous fruit-trees, and terraced fields, compose a rich and orderly decoration which soon renders one oblivious oi our monotonous fields of grain, our still more monoto- nous vegetation, and every northern landscape which seems to be a manufactory of bread and meat. We see, passing, numerous little carts mth young couples in them, a man and a girl ; the latter is gayly attired in bright colors, and has her head bare : she looks as if she was accompanying her lover. Many are the signs here of a voluptuous and picturesque content- ment. The young girls bind up their hair in the latest fashion, with puffs over the brow, and wear silk handker- chiefs, pendent ear-rings, and gilded combs. In Home, some superb and charming heads projected out of the dirtiest of rookeries. A little while ago, in passing through a small town, I observed, in a dull and gloomy street, leaning half-way out of an obscure window, a black velvet bodice, and above it, large dark eyes, flashing like lightning. Elsewhere, they raise their shawls over their heads, and stand ready draped for the painter. We cross before a cart in which eight peasants THE PEOPLE. o are packed — all of tliem singing, each taking a parfc in a grave noble air, as in a clioral. Indifferent objects — the form of a head, a garment, the physiognomies oi five or six lads in a village auberge proffering gallan- tries to a prett}^ girl — all indicate a new world and a distinct race. In my judgment, the characteristic trait by which they are distinguished is the regarding of ideal beauty and sensuous happiness as one and the same thing. The road ascends and the carriage advances slowly, with a re-eiiforcement of horses over the precipitous parts of the mountain. A meagre stream alternately winds and tumbles, and loses itself beneath the bed of rocks rolled down b}^ it during the winter. The white skel- eton of the mountain pierces through the brown mantle of its bare forests. I have never seen mountains more racked by upheavals ; the uphfted strata sometimes stand perpendicular like a wall. All this mineral fi'amework is shattered and seems to be dislocated, so cracked and so full of crevices is each layer. Patches of snow, on the summit, marble the carpet of fallen leaves. The north T\dnd moans sad and cold. The con- trast is a strange one, when one regards the radiant sky where the sun shines in full force, and the dehcious azure with its tints fading in the distance. On pass- ing the Apennines, low hills and rich plains appear well framed in and laid out, as on the hither slope. Here and there is a town stacked on a mountain ; a sort of round mole, and an ornament of the landscape, as we find them in the pictures of Poussin and Claude. This is the Apennines, with its bands of bastions ex- tending along a narrow peninsula, and imparting its character to the entire Italian landscape : no long rivers or grand plains, but narrow vallej^s, noble forms, plenty of rock and sunshine, with aliment and sensa- tions to corres>pond. How many individual and his- toric traits bear the imprint of this character ! CHAPTER II. PEECJGIA.— PRODUCTIONS, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS OF THE EAR] A RENAISSANCE.— I^IYSTIC ART.— ERA ANGELICO.— PERUGINO.- - LJi CAMBIO.— THE VALLEY OF PERUGIA. Perugia, April 3. — This is an old city of the miclclle ages, a city of defence and of refuge, situated on a craggy plateau, commanding a view of the entire val- ley. Portions of its walls are antique ; several of the gate foundations are Etruscan, the feudal epoch hav- ing added to them its towers and bastions. Most of its streets are sloping, and arched passages in them form sombre defiles. Oftentimes a house strides over the street, the first story prolonging itself into that which faces it ; vast walls of red brick, without win- dows, seem to be remnants of fortresses. — Innumerable fragments suggest to the imagination the feudal and republican city ; — the black entrance of San Agostino, a huge stone donjon, so scathed and corroded that it might be called a natural cavern ; and, on the summit, a terrace, supported by pretty little columns, which are Eoman, and so many delicate forms, the first ideas of elegance and of art that flourished amid the dangers and enmities of the middle ages ; — the Palazzo del Governo, massive and severe, as was essential for street fights and seditions, but Avith a gracefal portal, entwined with stone wreaths and cordons of sculptured figures, simple and sincere ; — Gothic forms and Latin reminiscences ; cloisters of superposed arcades, and lofty brick church-towers, blackened by time ; sculp- tures of the early renaissance, of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the most original and animated of all ; a fountain by Arnolfo di Lapo, by Nicolas and EAllLY SCULPTUKE. ' by John of Pisa; a tomb of Benedict XI., again by John of Pisa (1301). Nothing is more charming than this first flight of an active invention, and of modern thought half-emerging fi'om gothic tradition. The pope lies on a couch in a marble alcove, of which two cherubs withdraw the curtains : above, in an ogive ar- cade, stand the Virgin and two saints, to welcome his soul. Language cannot express the surprised, tender, and childlike air of the Virgin : the sculptor had seen some young girl weeping at the bedside of a dying mother, and, wholly mastered by the impression, fi'eely, without thought of the antique, unrestrained by any school, he expressed his sentiment. It is these spontaneous utterances vvhich make a work of art a thing of eternity. They are heard athwart five centuries of time as distinctly as at the first day : man at length speaks across feudal and monastic tyranny, and we listen to the personal exclamation of an independent and complete spirit. The most trifling productions of this early age of sculpture arrest one's steps and fix one to the spot : it seems as if one caught the tones of an actual vibrating voice. After Michael Angelo, types are established ; no change is made but to arrange or purif}^ a prescribed form. Before him, and even into the middle of the fifteenth cen- tury, each artist, like the citizen, is himself : genius and character are not subordinated by fashion and con- ventionalism ; every man stands erect before nature with a sentiment of his own, and figures emerge as diversified and as original in the arts as in life. The chanting of a mass in the cathedral prevent- ed me from seeing more than a bishop's tomb near the entrance. Beneath the recumbent bishop are four women holding two vases, a sword, and a book, admirable in their breadth and simplicity, with ample figures and magnificent luxuriant hair, but reahstic nevertheless, and only a nobler imprint o PERUGIA AND ASSISI. of tlie model employed by veracious nature. To be one's self tlirougli one's self, alone and without reserve, to the very end, is there any other precept in art and in life? Through this precept and this instinct the modern man has made himself and unmade the mid- dle ages. Such are the reveries that occupy one's brain while wandering through these quaint, steep, and rugged streets, in these rude passages paved with brick and crossed with foot-props, amidst these strange structures where the eccentricity and ir- regularity of the municipal and seigneurial life of ancient days bursts forth scarcely tempered by the few restorations of a modern police. Perugia, in the fourteenth century, was a democratic and belligerent republic, contending with and overcoming its neigh- bors. The nobles were excluded from office, and one hundred and fifty of them plotted the massacre of the magistrates : they were either hung or banished. One hundred and twenty castles stood on its territory, and there were eighty fortified villages. Gentlemen con- dottieri maintained their independence in these and waged war against the city. In Perugia there were gentlemen condottieri : the principal one, Biordo de Michelotti, assuming too great authority, was assas- sinated in his own house by the Abbe de St. Pierre. Besieged by Braccio de Montone, the Perugians sprung from the top of their walls, or let themselves down with ropes, in order to fight hand to hand with the defiant soldiers below. In the midst of such usages the souls of men are kept alive, and the soil is well prepared for the growth of the arts. Painting : Fra Angelico and Perugino. — But what a contrast between these arts and these usages ! In the Pinacotheca is a collection of the pictures of the school of which Perugia is the centre. It is mystic throughout ; it seems as if Assisi and its seraphic pi- ety governed all intellects. In this barbaric era she was FRA ANGELICO. 9 the one centre of tliouglit ; there were but few of them during the niidJlo ages, and eacli extended its rule on all sides. Fra Angelico da Fiesole, driven from Floi*- ence, came and lived near here for seven years, and likewise worked here. He was better off here than in his own pagan Florence; and it is to him that the e3^e is fii'st attracted. It seems, on contemplating him, as ii one were reading the "Imitation of Jesus Christ;" pure and gentle figures on golden backgrounds breathe a mute repose, like immaculate roses in the garden of Paradise. I remember an "Annunciation" by him, in two fi'ames ( Nos. 221, 222). The Virgin is candor and gentleness itself : she has almost a German phys- iognomy — and how beautiful the two hands so piously clasped ! The angel Avith curling tresses kneeling be- fore her seems like a little smiling maiden, somewhat simple, who is about to leave the maternal home. Alongside of this, in the "Nativity," before the delicate infant Christ with dream}^ eyes, two angels in long robes offer flowers ; they are so youthful, and yet how grave! These are the delicate touches which subse- quent painters are not to recover. A sentiment is an infinite and incommunicable thing ; no research and no labor can reproduce it in its integrit3^ In true pietj" tliere is a certain reservation, a chasteness, and conse- quently, arrangement of drapery and a choice of ac- cessories which the cleverest masters, a century later, will know no more. For example, in an "Annunciation" by Perugino, which is quite near this, the picture represents, not a small private orator}^, but a grand court. The Virgin is standing, frightened, but not alone ; there are tv/o angels behind her, and two others behmd Gabriel. Is this chasteness to be reproduced later? Another pic« ture by Perugino exhibits St. Joseph and the Virgin kneeling before the infant : behind them, a slender por- tico profiles its light columns in the open air, and three lO PERUGIA AND ASSIST. shepherds, at intervals, are praying. This great void enhances the religions emotions ; it seems as if one heard the silence of the country. In like manner Perugino's features and attitudes express an unknown and unique sentiment. His figures are mystic children — or, if j^ou please, adult souls kept infantile by the schooling of the cloister. None of them regard each other ; none of them act, each being absorbed in his own contemplation ; all look as if dreaming of God ; each remains fixed, and seems to withhold the breath for fear of disturbing the vision within. The angels especially, with their downcast eyes and bended brow, are true adorers, prostrate, steadfast, and motionless : those of the " Baptism of Jesus " have the humble and virginal modesty and innocence of a nun communing. Christ himself is a tender seminarist, who, for the first time, leaves the house of his good uncle the cure, never having raised his eyes to a woman, and receiving the host every morning in serving the mass. The only heads at the present day which give you any idea of this sentiment, are those of peasant girls reared, quite young, in a convent. Many of these at forty years of age have rosy cheeks without a wrinkle. From their placid look it seems as if they had never lived, while on the other hand they have never suffered. In like manner, these figures stand motionless on the thresh- old of thought without crossing it — without, indeed, attempting to cross it. Man is not arrested, he arrests himself : the bud is not crushed, but it does not open. No similarity here is there to the mortifications and excesses of ancient Christianity, or of the catholic restoration ; the end in view is not to stifle thought, or to subdue the flesh ; the body is beautiful and in perfect health. A youthful St. Sebastian, in green and gold bootees, an amiable young virgin almost Flemish and gross, besides twenty others of Perugino's fig- PEiiUGINO's WORKS. li iires, are not the subjects of an ascetic regimen. Tlicir slender legs, liowever, and inert eye, denote that they are still the inhabitants of the sleeping forest. What a singular moment ! — The same with Pemgino as with Van Eyck : the bodies belong to the renaissance, and iheir souls to the middle ages ! This is still more apparent in the Camhio, a kind o exchange or guildhall of the merchants. Perugino was intrusted with its decoration in the year 1500 ; and he has placed here a "Transfiguration," an "Adoration of the Shepherds," Sibyls, Prophets, Leonidas, Socrates, and other pagan heroes and philosophers, a St. John over the altar, and Mars and Jupiter on the archway Alongside of this is a chapel wainscoted with sculp- tured wood and gilded and painted, the Eternal in the centre, and diverse arabesques of elegant nude women on the cruppers of lions. Can the confluence of two ages be better realized, the intermingling ideas, the bloom of a fresh paganism underneath a decrepit Christianity? — Merchants in long robes assemHed on the wooden seats of this narrow hall ; before open- ing their deliberations, they proceed to kneel down in the little adjoining chapel to hear mass. — There Gian Nicola Manni has painted on the two sides of the high altar the animated and dehcate figures of his "Annunciation," an ample Herodias, some charming erect young women, graceful and slender, which make one realize the spirit and richness of corporeal vitality. While joining in the droning hum of the responses, or following the sacred gestures of the officiating priest, more than one of the faithful has let his eyes wander up to the rosy torsos of the little chimeras crouched on the celling, executed, as is said in the town, by a young man of great promise, the favorite pupil of the master Kaphael Sanzio d'Urbino. — The service is over ; they return to the council-chamber, and there, it may bo presumed, a debate ensues on tlie payment of three 12 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. hundred and fifty crowns in gold promised to Peru gino for liis work. This is not too nincli ; lie lias devoted seven years to it, and his fellow-citizens com- prehend sympatheticall}^, through mental similarity, the two phases of his genius, the old and the new, the one christian and the other semi-pagan. First comes a "Nativity," under a lofty portico, with a landscape of slender trees, such as he loved. It is an aerial meditative picture, calculated to make one appreciate a contemplative life. One cannot too highly commend the modest gravity, the mute nobleness of the Virgin kneeling before her infant. Three large serious angels on a cloud are singing from a sheet of music ; and this simplicity bears the mind backward to the times of mysteries. But one has only to turn his head to see figures of an entirely different character. The master has been to Florence, and antique statues, their nudities, the imposing action and spirited in- flexions of figures new to him, have revealed another world, which he reproduces with some restriction, but which entices him away from the road he first followed. Six prophets, five sibyls, ^ve warriors and as many pa- gan philosophers stand erect, and each, like an antique statue, is a masterpiece of force and physical noble- ness. It is not that he imitates a Grecian type or costume, for complicated casques, fantastic coiffures, and reminiscences of chivalry, are oddly intermingled with tunics and nudities ; but the sentiment is antique. They are powerful men satisfied with existence, and not pious souls dreaming of paradise. The sibyls are all blooming with beauty and youthfulness. The first one is advancing, and her bearing and form are of royal grandeur and statoliness. Just as noble and grand is the prophet-king who faces them. The se- riousness, the elevation of these figures is incom- parable. At this dawn of the imagination; the face, still intact, preserves, like that of Greek statuary, the rEPiUGIXO S WORKS. Vi simplicity and immobilitj of primitive expression. The changes of the physiognomy do not efface the tj'pe ; man is not broken np into petty, varying, and fleeting thoughts ; tlie cliaractor is made prominent by unity and repose. On a pilaster to the left is a bloated countenance^ quite vulgar, with long hair under a red cap, which might be taken for an ill-humored abbe : the ex- pression is one of irritability, and even of craftiness. This is Perugino, painted by himself. He w^as at this time much changed. Those who have seen his other portrait, also painted by himself some years before at Florence, have some difficulty in recognizing it. There is in his life as in his works two contrary sentiments, and two distinct epochs. No mind furnishes better evidence, through its contradictions and its harmonies, of the great transformation that was going on around him. He is, in the first place, religious : no one can doubt this w^hen for so long a time, and even in the heart of pagan Florence, he is seen repeating and purifying figures so religious — painting gTatuitously, to obtain by prayers the oratory of a confrerie situated opposite to his home ; painting and retaining in his house fourteen banners, in order to loan them to pre- cessions, and living and developing himself in the pious convents of Umbria.* He is a creator in sa- cred art, and a man creates only after his own heart. It is not, again, pushing conjecture too far to represent him at Florence as an admirer of Savonarola. Savon- arola is Prior of the convent which he is decorating ; Savonarola causes pagan pictures to be burnt, and suddenly excites Florence up to the highest pitch of ascetic and christian enthusiasm. The first words of one of Savonarola's sermons are inscribed on a paper in the hand of the portrait which Perugino then made *Rio Eistoire de VArt Chretien^ vol. ii. p. 218. 14 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. (^■f liiniself; and lie purchases a plot of ground on which to erect a house for himself in the reformer's city. Suddenly the scene shifts : Savonarola is burnt alive, and it seems to his disciples that Providence, justice, and divine power, are engulphed in his tomb. Several among them have retained to the end in their souvenirs, wholly corporeal and highly colored, the im- age of the martyr, betrayed, tortured, and reviled at the stake by those whose salvation he secured. Is it this great shock, joined to the epicurean teachings oi Florence, which overthrew the faith of Perugino? At all events, on his return he is no longer the same man. His countenance, ironically distrustful, bears the marks of inward brooding and depression. His re- ligious works are less pure ; he dispatches them finally by the dozen like a manufacturer ; he is soon charged with caring no longer for any thing but money.'^" He undertakes in the Cambio pagan subjects, and in their treatment assumes the style of the goldsmiths and anatomists of Florence. He paints, moreover, alle- gorical nudities,t Love and Chastity, meagerly and coldly, like a laggard libertine who poorly compensates himself for the severities of his youth. He seems to have become a common atheist, embittered and hard- ened like all those who deny in hate and in mockery, through deception and chagrin. "He never could," says Yasari, " bring himself to believe in the immortal- ity of the soul. His iron brain could never be turned to good works ; he centred all his hopes in the goods of fortune." And a contemporary annotator adds ', " I>eing at the point of death, he was told that it was necessary to confess himself.' He replied : ' I want to see what a soul which has not confessed, will be in that place !' And he steadily refused to do other- wise." Such an end, after such a life, does it not * Vasari. f Gallery of the Louvre. RAPHAEL AND NATURE. 15 show liow the age of St. Francis becomes the age of Alexander VI. ? Others were more fortunate — as, for example, Ra- piiael. It is here, in this atcliei", before these landscaj^es, that he was formed ; and many times have I here dwelt on his pure, happy genius ; on his clear, open landscapes ; on the precision, somewhat dry, and the exquisite sim- j >1 icity of his early works. This sky is of perfect serenity ; the light transparent atmosphere allows one to see the fine forms of the trees a league away. A hundred yards from San Pietro, an esplanade, planted with ever- greens, advances like a promontory ; below, spreads the campagna, a vast garden scattered with trees where the foliage of the olive imprints its pale rays on the verdure of the fresh-growing grain. The magnificent blue cu- pola glows sparkling witli sunshine ; and the rays sport at will in this grand amphitheatre, through which they dart unimpeded by any obstacle. Toward the west rise gilded mountain chains, one above the other, clear- er and clearer as they approach the remote horizon, the last one as exquisitely delicate as a silken veil. Meanwhile their ridges meet, mingling together lights and darks until, finally descending and expanding, they diminish and are lost in the plain. Light, relief, and harmony — the eye marvels at and revels in so broad an expanse, so lovely in composition, of such perfect dis- tinctness of form. But the chilly atmosphere from the mountains will not let the body lose sight of itseK in a too voluptuous contentment : one feels that the infertile rock and winter are near at hand. Yonder winds a long precipitous broken crag, sharp against the sky^ which pales to the hue of steel above fields of snow that seem to be slabs of marble. CHAPTEK III. 4»8fJiSI— VILLAGES AND THE PEASANTRY.— THE THREE CHURCHES —GIOTTO AND DANTE.—CONCORDANCE OF CHRISTIAN MYSTI CISM WITH GOTHIC ART.— AN ENTHUSIASTIC UVIAGINATION COM PATIBLE WITH BARBARISM. Assisi, April dith.—A stroll on foot of four hours tc Bee the peasantry. A well-cultivated and charming country ; the green grain is coining up profusely, the grapevines are bud- ding, and every vine clings to an elm ; clear streams flow through the trenches. On tlie horizon is a belt ol mountains, and the brilliant, immaculate snow blend r with the satin of the clouds. Oarts abound, wdth peasants in them singing. It is a great sign of prosperity, these little vehicles ; they show that there is a class elevated above hard labor and the grosser necessities of life. Madonnas are numerous, and, for three ave, promise forty days of indulgence. This is Italian religion. Otherwise, the villages resem- ble ours, and indicate about the same degree of cultiva- tion. It is Sunday; the people wear heavy shoes and passable clothes— no rags. They are very gay, and laugh and chat together in the open square ; some are pitching quoits ; others are playing ball ; and others morra. The inns and houses are not dirtier nor worse furnished than in France. Heavy beams support the ceiling ; there are chairs, tables, sideboards of polished wood, and a bottle -dresser provided with a couple of Ma- donnas. In the entrance-hall two large casks, encircled with heavy planks, stand permanently; and I can tes- tify ^nat the wine is not dear. Quarters of meat hang suspended on iron hooks. In a fertile country that consumes its own products, prosperity is n atural. The THE TOMB OF ST. FHANCIS. 17 inn begins to fill up, and the young lady of the house enters with her mother, gaudily dressed, with a black veil on her head and a sweet smile on her lips. She is gay, brilliant and coquettish ; and the young men be- gin to hover around her with that tender complaceni^y and ravished voluptuous air which is peculiai ^o tl.e Italians. On the summit of an abiapt height, over a double row of arcades, appears the monastery ; at its base a torrent ploughs the soil, winding off in the distance be- tween banks of boulders ; beyond is the old town pro- longing itself on the ridge of the mountain. We ascend slowly under the burning sun, and suddenly, at the end of a court surrounded by slender columns, enter with- in the obscurity of the edifice. It is unequalled : before having seen it one has no idea of the art and the genius of the middle ages. Append to it Dante and the " Fio- retti" of St. Francis, and it becomes the mastei'piece of mystic Christianity. There are three churches, one above the other, all of them arranged around the tomb of St. Francis. Ovei this venerated body, which the people regard as ever Living and absorbed in prayer at the bottom of an inac- cessible cave, the edifice has arisen and gloriously flowered like an architectural shrine. The lowest is a crypt, dark as a sepulchre, into which the visitors de- scend with torches ; pilgrims keep close to the di'ipping waUs and grope along in order to reach the grating. Here is the tomb, in a pale, dim light, similar to that of limbo. A few brass lamps, almost without light, burn here eternally like stars lost in mournful obscurity. The ascending smoke clings to the arches, and the heavy odor of the tapers mingles with that of the cave. The guide trims his torch ; and the sudden flash in this horrible darkness, above the bones of a corpse, is like one of Dante's visions. Here is the mystic grave of a saint who, in the midst of corruption and worms, bo 18 PEKUGIA AND ASSISl. holds his slimy dungeon of earth filled with the super- natural radiance of the Saviour. But that which cannot be represented by words is the middle church, a long, low spiracle supported by small, round arches curving in the half-shadow, and whose voluntary depression makes one instinctively bend his knees. A coating of sombre blue and of red- dish bands starred with gold, a marvellous embroidery of ornaments, wreaths, delicate scroll-work, leaves, and painted figures, covers the arches and ceilings with its harmonious multitude ; the eye is overwhelmed by it ; a population of forms and tints lives on its vaults ; I would not exchange this cavern for all the churches of Rome ! Neither antiquity nor the renaissance felt this power of the innumerable : classic art is effective through its simplicity, gothic art through its richness; one takes for its type the trunk of a tree, the other the tree entire with all its luxuriance of foliage. There is a world here as in an animated forest, and each object is complex, complete like a living thing : on one hand is the choir-stalls, surcharged and sown with sculp- tures ; yonder a rich winding staircase, elaborate rail- ings, a light marble pulpit and funereal monuments, the marble of which, fretted and chased, seems the most elegant jewel-casket : here and there, haphazard, a lofty sheaf of slender columns, a cluster of stone gems whose arrangement seems a phantasy, and, in the labyrintii of colored foliage, a profusion of ascetic paintings with their halos of faded gold : all this vaguely discernible in a dim purple light, amidst dark reflec- tions from the wainscotings, whilst, at the entrance, the setting sun radiates myriads of golden darts like the peacock displaying its splendor. On the summit, the upper church shoots up as bril- liant, as aerial, as triumphant, as this is low and grave. Eeally, if one were to give way to conjecture, he might suppose that in these three sanctuaries the architect THE TOMB OF ST. FRANCIS. i- meant to represent tlie three worlds ; below, the gloom of death and the horrors of the infernal tomb ; in the middle, the impassioned anxiety of the beseeching christian who strives and hopes in this world of trial ; aloft, the bliss and dazzling glory of paradise. The latter, uplifted in the air and in the light, tapers itir- columns, narrows its ogives, refines its arches, mounts upward and upward illuminated by the full day of its lofty windows, by the radiance of its rosaces, by the stained glass, and golden threads, and stars, which flash through the arches and vaults that confine the beatified beings and sacred passages with which it is painted from pavement to ceiling. Time, undoubtedly, has undermined them, several have fallen, and the azure that covers them is tarnished ; but the mind im- mediately revives what is lost to the eye, and it again beholds the angelic pomp such as it first burst forth six hundred years ago. Cathedrals do not have this splendor ; a detached chapel is necessary in order to prefigure to man the last of the stations of the chris- tian life. As in the Sahite ClwpeTlc of our Louis IX., man here found a tabernacle ; the gravity and the ter- rors of religion were effaced ; he could see nothing around him but celestial brightness and ecstatic rap- tures. Beneath tliis vault which, like an aerial dais, seems not to rest on the earth, amidst golden scintilla- tions and floods of light transfigured by the windows, in this marvellous embroidery of forms confusedly inter- mingling and intersecting each other as in a bridal robe, man felt as if he were translated alive into paradise. We can neither reproduce nor depict these festivals. They have been depicted for us, and I silently re- peated these stanzes by Dante : And lo ! a sudden lustre ran across On every side athwart the spacious forest, Such that it oiade me doubt if it were liglitning. "0 PERUGIA AND ASSISl And a delicious melody there ran Along tlie luminous air . . , While mid such manifold first-fruits f walked Of the eternal pleasm-e all enrapt, And still solicitous of more delights, In front of us, like an enkindled fire Became the air beneath the verdant boughs And the sweet sound as singing now was heard. A little farther on, seven trees of gold Far brighter than the moon in the serene Of midnight, at the middle of her month. Then saw I people, as behind their leaders. Coming behind them, garmented in white, And such a whiteness never was on earth.* Everything is in keeping ; Dante's friend Giotto lias painted similar visions in the second church. His pupils and successors, all imbued with his style, have tapestried the other walls of the edifice with their works. There is no christian monument where pure mediaeval ideas reach the mind under so many forms, and which explain each other by so many contempo- rary masterpieces. Over the altar, enclosed within an elaborate iron and bronze railing, Giotto has covered an elliptic arch with grand, calm figures, and with mystic allegories. There is Saint Francis receiving Poverty as spouse from the hands of Christ ; Chastity vainly besieged in a crenelated fortress, and honored by angels ; Obedience under a canopy, surrounded by saints and kneeling angels ; Saint Francis, glorified, in the gilded mantle of a deacon, and enthroned in the midst of celestial virtues and chanting cherubim This Giotto, who in the north seems to us simply un- skilful and barbarous, is already a perfect pa niter ; he * Purgatorio, canto XXIX, Longfellow's translation. GIOTTO. 21 romposes groups and appreciates airs of the lieaj, whatever rigidity still remains with him does but augment the religious seriousness of his figures. Too powerful relief, too great human action would distuib our emotion ; too varied or too animated expressions are not necessary for angels and symbolic virtues ; all are spirits in ecstatic immobility. The vigorous and splendid virgins and muscular archangels, which are to follow two centuries later, reconduct us back to earth ; their flesh is so tangible that we do not believe in their divinity. Here the personages, the grand and noble women ranged in hieratic processions, resemble the Matildas and Lucias of Dante ; they are the sub- lime and floating apparitions of a dream. Their beau- tiful blonde tresses are gathered chastely and imi- formly around their brows ; pressing close to each other they meditate ; grand white or blue tunics in long folds depend around their forms ; they crowd around the saint, and around Christ in silence, like a flock of faithful birds, and their heads, somewhat mel- ancholy, possess the grave languor of celestial bhss. This is a unique moment. The thirteenth century is the term and the flower of living Christianity ; hence- forth there is only scholasticism, decadence, and fruit- less gropings after another age and another spirit. A sentiment v^hich previously w^as only forming, Love, then burst forth with extraordinary power, and Saint Francis was its herald. He called water, fire, the moon and the sun brothers ; he preached to birds, and ransomed lambs on their way to market with his own mantle. It is stated that hares and pheasants sought refuge under the folds of his robe. His heart over- flowed toward all living creatures. His first disciples dwelt like himself in a sort of rapture, " so that often- times for twenty and even thirty days they lived alone on the tops of high mountams, contemplating all celestial objects." Their writings are effusions. "Let 33 PERUGIA AND A3SISI. no one rebuke me if love forces me to go like a mad man ! No heart can resist, none can escape from sucL love . . . For heaven and earth declare aloud and repeat to me, and all those whom it is my duty to love, address me : * Cherish the love which hath made us in order to bring us near to Him' . . . O, Christ, often hast thou trodden this earth like a man intoxicated! Love led thee, like a man that is sold. In all things thou showest only love, never art thou conscious of thyself .... The arrows poured down in such flights as to overwhelm me with agony. He launched them forth so powerfully that I despaired of warding them off, overcome not by a veritable death, but by excess of joy." It was not merely in the cloisters that such transports were encountered. Love became sovereign in laic as well as in religious life. In Florence associa- tions of a thousand persons clad in white traversed the streets with trumpets, led by a chief who was called the Lord of Love. The new language growing into life, fresh poesy and fresh thought, are devoted to describing and exalting love. I have just re-read the " Yita Nuova," and a few cantos of the " Paradise ;" the sentiment is so intense that it fills one with fear : these men live in the burning realm where reason melts away. Dante's account of himself, like his poem, shows constant hallucination : he swoons, visions assail him, his body becomes ill, and the whole force of his thoughts is given to the recalling of or commenting on the agonizing or divine spectacles under which he has succumbed.^ He consults various friends about his ecstasies, and they reply to him in verses as myste- rious and as extreme as his own. It is clear that at this moment all the higher culture of the mind is cen- tred around morbid and sublime reveries. The in- * Compare the " Aurelia" of Gerard de Nerval, am\ the " Inter mezzo" of Heine. MYSTIC iYMBOLrvY. 33 itiated use an apocalyptic languago, purposely obscure j their words imply double and triple meanings. Dante liimself lays it down as a rule tliat each subject con- tains four. In this state of extremes everything be- comes symboKc : a color like green or red, a number, an hour of the day or of the night, is of peculiar signifi- cance ; it is the blood of Christ, or the emerald fichh: Oi paradise, or the virginal azure of heaven, or the sacred cypher of divine personages which thus be- comes present to the mind. Through catalepsies and transports the brain labors, and an overcharged sensi- bility thrills with paroxysms which exalt it to supreme delight or precipitate it into infinite despair. Then do the natural boundaries between the diverse realms of thought become effaced and disappear. The adored mistress is transfigured into the hkeness of a celestial virtue. Scholastic abstractions are transformed into ideal apparitions. Souls congregate in etherial roses, '• perpetual flowers of eternal joy which, like a per- fume, make perceptible all odors at once." Brute tangible matter, and the entire scaffolding of dry formulas melt and evaporate on the heights of mystic contemplation, until nothing remains but a melody, a perfume, a luminous ray, or an emblem ; this remnant of terrestrial imagery never having any value in itself, other than to prefigure the unfathomable and ineffable beyond. How did they support the anguish and constant ex- cesses of such a condition — the nightmaie visions of Hell and Paradise, the tears, the tremors, the swoons^ and other alternatives of such a tempest ?'^ What were the nerves that resisted all this ? What fecundity of soul and of imagination fed it? x4Jl has since degen- erated ; man then was more vigorous, and remained * B caddi, come corpo nwrto cade. Many similar instances almosl uqual to tliio one are to be found in tJie Divine Comedy. 34 PERUGIA AND iSSISI. young a longer time. I glanced lately over the life oi Petrarch, written by himself. He loved Laura fourteei years. Now, the youth of the heart, the age of great discoutents and great reveries, last five or six years , after this one craves a comfortable house and a respect- able position. I imagine that a body tempered by war was more resistant, and that the rude, semi-barbarous regimen which destroyed the weak, allowed only the strong to subsist. But it is especially necessary to con- sider that melancholy, danger, monotony of life with- out diversion, without reading, and ever threatened, de- veloped a capacity for enthusiasm, sublimity, and in- tensity of sentiment. The security, comfort, and ele- gancies of our civilization divide us and belittle us ; a cascade is converted into a marsh. We enjoy and suf- fer through a thousand daily, petty sensations ; in those days, sensibility, instead of evaporating, became choked up, and accumulated passion burst forth in eruptions. In a Eussian romance, Tarass Boulba, a young Cossack chief, on leaving the camp with his senses blunted by the foulness of nomadic Hfe, the odors of brandy and of the stable, and through daily contact with ferocious and brutal beings, perceives a beautiful and deHcate maiden in handsome attire ; he is intoxicated, kneels down, forgets father and country, and thenceforth contends against his own kindred. A similar crisis prostrated Dante before a child of nine years. Let us dwell a moment on the surrounding con- dition of things. It was an epoch of pitiless wars and of mortal enmities. People in Florence proscribed each other, and fought from house to house, and from quarter to quarter. Dante himself was condemned to the stake. The torments invented by the Bomanos were still rife in men's imaginations, and a regime worse than our Beign of Terror had taken root be- tween family and family, caste and caste, and city and RELIGIOUS FERVOR 25 cifcj. Out of this bristling precinct the mind issued free for the first time after so mnr.y centuries, and it entered on an unexplored field. It did not follow its natural bent, as formerly at a similar crisis in the small republics of Greece ; a powerful religion seized upon it at its birtli and diverted it off. The supremo good tendered to it was not an equilibrium of modeiuto sensations and tlie healthiness of active faculties, but transports of infinite adoration and the raptures of an over-excited imagination. Happiness no longer con- sisted in a consciousness of strength, wisdom and beauty ; in being the honored citizen of a glorious city ; in dancing and singing noble hymns ; in talldng with a friend under a tree on a serene day. These pleasures were declared inadequate, low and crim- inal ; appeals were made to feminine sentiments, to nervous sensibility, and man had held out to him ecstatic contemplation, indefinable raptures and de- lights to which the senses, language and the imagina- tion never attain. The sterner life vv'as, the more ex- alted were these assurances. The vastness of the con- trast multiplied the charms of the promised bliss, and the heart with all its youthful energy rushed through the issue opened to it. Then was seen that strange incongruity of a laic life similar to that of the Greek republics, and a religious life similar to that of the Soiifis of Persia — on the one hand, free citizens, prac- tical men, combatants and artists, and on the other, cloistered ascetics, preachers wandering about half- naked, and penitents offering themselves to the lash ; — furthermore, the two extremes met in one person, the same spirit harboring the most virile energy and the most feminine gentleness ; the same man magistrate and mystic ; a practical politician filled with hatred, corresponding in enigmas on the languors and halluci- nations of love ; the chief of a party and the fathei of a famil}^ absorbed Avith the worship of a dead child 36 PEKUGIA AND ASSIST. and diffusing over actual landscapes and contemporary figures, over positive interests, local resentments, and the teclmical science of his country and centurj^ tlie monstrous or divine illuminations of ecstasy and of horror. A monk conducted me into the refectory, and then through a series of halls to a square interior court where a two-story portico, supported by delicate little columns, forms an elegant promenade. Pavement, col- umns, walls and cisterns, all are of stone ; above, like a frame, runs a roof of reddish tile. The blue sky, like a round dome, overspreads the white square ; no one can imagine the effect of such simple forms and colors. All around the convent winds a second ' promenade un- der ogive arcades of rough stones turned brown by the sun ; from this the eye embraces the beautiful val- ley and its diadem of snow-clad mountains. The poor monks of the "Fioretti," through impoverishing their life, ennobled it ; two or three sentiments absorbed it entirely, but these were sublime. Whoever abandoned the brutal herd was compelled to become a great poet ; when he had not become a kneeling machine, he ended in appreciating the serenity and grandeur of scenes like this. " Brother Bernardo lived in contempla- tion on the heights like a swallow : for this reason Brother Egidio declared that he was the sole one to \^'hom was awarded the gift of nourisliing himself in flying like the swallow And Brother Cur- rado h aving performed his orisons here, there appeared to him the Queen of Heaven with her blessed infant in her arms, in great splendor of light, and, approach- ing Brother Currado, she placed in his arms the blessed infant, which Currado having received and very devoutly kissed, and embracing it and pressing it to his bosom, melted away and wholly dissolved in divine love with most inexpressible consolation." On the plain below is a large church containing the OVERBECK. a"! saint's house ; but it is modem, with x pompous pagan cupola. Overbeck's frescoes are imitations. In striv- ing to be gothic he shows himself awkward, giving twisted necks to his angels, and to the figure of God tlie pitiful expression of a man whose dinner disagrees with him. You hasten away from them ; after genuine devotion nothing is more disagreeable ihi n its coun- terfeit. CHAPTEK IV. POIJTICAL CONi^ITl'ON.— DIFFICULTIES AND RESOURCES.— DlSPOftl TION OP THE MIDDLE CLASS.— PREDOMINANCE AND PROGRESS OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL AND LIBERAL PARTY.— SYMPATHY BE TWEEN ITALY AND FRANCE.— INCONVENIENCES AND ADVANTA- GES OP MODERN CENTRALIZATION. Ajoril 8. — Numerous conversations every clay with people of every class and opinion ; but the liberals predominate. The diplomats, they say, are ill-disposed toward the unity of Italy; they do not regard it as substantial. According to the two clever men with whom I liave travelled, one an officer and the other an attache to an embassy, the capital trait of the Italians is w^eakness of character and richness of intellect, quite the oppo- site of the Spaniards, who with a strong will have nar- row and obdurate brains. They dispute about the number of volunteers under Garibaldi in 1859 ; some carry it up to twenty-five hundred, and others to seven thousand, — in any event a ridiculously small number. The Emperor Napoleon led the foreign legion with al- most empty regiments ; nobody came forward to fill them up. It seems very hard to the Italian cO quit hia mistress or wife, to enlist and to undergo discipline ; the military spirit died out a long time ago in the country. According to my friend the officer, who served in the late campaign, Milan furnished in all but eighty volunteers, and the peasantry rather sided wiih the Austrians. As to either the middle class or tl ie nobles, they were very enthusiastic and made speeches, but their enthusiasm evaporated in words, none of it sxtending to risking their lives. Generosity, true feel- rOLITICS. 29 ing, and ardent patriotism were only to be found among the women. After the peace of Villafranca some Frenchmen, lodging near Peschiera, said to their hosts, "All, yon remain Anstrians — what a pity!" The tlanghter of the family did not at first comprehend them, but Avhen she understood their meaning she raised both hnnds, and, wdth flaming eyes, asked her brothers if they lijid no gnns and if they called themselves men ; " Never," said the officer, " have I seen an expression so ardent and so sublime !" Her brothers shook their heads and replied with the discreet patience of the Italian, "Whatis there todo?" This lack of energy contributed a good deal toward precipitating peace. The Emperor Napoleon stated to M. Cavour, " You promised me two hundred thou- sand men, sixty thousand Piedmontese and one hun- dred and forty thousand Italians. You give me thirty thousand ; I shall be compelled to call for one hundred thousand more of the French." If the protected do not aid themselves the protector becomes uneasy and discouraged, and the war suddenly droops. Accus- tomed to yielding, the Italian has lost the faculty of resisting ; if you get angry ho is astonished, becomes alarmed, yields and regards you as crazy, (malto). Such is the process by which the fiery M. de Merode obtained an ascendancy over the Sacred College. Now, when a people knows not how to fight, its mde- pendence is only provisional ; its life depends on gTace or on accident. This is why, they say. Piedmont did wrong to yield to opinion in the taking of Naples. It has made itself so much the weaker ; its army is the worse for recruit- ing its regiments with poor soldiers. If, to-day, it is master there, it is the same as with Championnet, Ferdinand, Murat and their predecessors : with ten thousand soldiers one can always be master of Naples ; but let any sudden crisis occur, and the government 30 PEEUGIA AND ASSISI. falls to tlie ground, this one running tlie same risk as those that have gone before it. It has just committed a serious blunder in abandoning the convents to muni- cipal rancor ; a lot of miserable monks and nuns are turned out of doors, which only excites scandal, and provokes resentment, as in la Yendee. Now religion here is not abstract or rational as in France ; it is based on the imagination and is so much the more sensitive and vivacious ; some day or other it will inevi- tably turn against liberalism and Piedmont. Besides, the unity of the country is against nature ; Italy, through its geography, its races and its past, is divided into three sections ; the most it can do is to form a federation. If it is kept together to-day, it is through an artificial power, and because France, on the Alps, stands sentinel against Austria. Should a war occur on the Ehine the Emperor will not amuse himself split- ting up his forces, and then Italy will break up into its natural divisions. I reply to this that the revolution here is not an affair of race, but one of interests and ideas. It began at the end of the last century, with Beccaria for instance, in the propagation of French literature and philosophy. The middle class, the enlightened are those who diffuse it by leading the people along with them in their wake, as formerly in the United States during the war of independence. It is a new force, superior to provincial antipathies ; unknown a hundred years ago ; inherent, not in the nerves, in the blood and in the habits, but in the brain, in study and in discussion ; of vast grande*ir, since it brought about the American and French revolutions, and growing in grandeur since ceaseless discoveries of the human mind and multiplied ameliorations of the human condition daily contribute to augment it. Will it suffice to sustain Italy ? That is a problem of moral mechanics, and is not to be solved, for lack of the PATPJOTISM. ^ moans by which to estimate the power of the lever in relation to the resistance of the mass. Meanwhile, lei us examine a few simple facts ready at hand : it is the only way to arrive at any approximate value of forces which we can see but which we cannot measure. Conscripts are passing along the road in gray vests, soldiers in uniform, and fi-equently handsome officers in blue with a gay and spruce air. Every small town has a national guard : — you will see these guards sit- ting on stone benches in the sunshine at the entrance of town-halls ; — the streets bear the names of Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi and Solferino. People are in- toxicated "with their recent independence, and talk of themselves vain - gloriously. A Roman who is going to Switzerland, remarks that " we have four hundred thousand soldiers and six hundred thousand national guards ; in two years Italy will become united, and we shall then be able to whip the Austrians." — The ex- aggerations of patriotism and of hope are spurs of great utility. On the fi'ontier the chief of customs, a Piedmon- tese and formerly a soldier in the Crimea, stormed and railed in the middle of the night in his wooden shanty against Antonelli and Merode, " those brigands and assassins." He descanted on the rights of nations and the duties of citizens. " The atmosphere here is unhealthy four months of the year, the country ia gloomy, living is dear and life solitary, — but I serve Italy, I have already served her in the ranks, and I trust that next year there will be no frontier." — You will note that the comrades of Hoche, a sergeant in 1789 in the French guards, uttered substantially the same words and in the same tone. At Foligno, in a small cafe, I offer haiocchi in pay- ment ; tlie proprietoi refuses them ; " No, Sign or, that money has no value here — we want nothing Roman. Let the Pope and tlio priests clear out and go tr ;^3 PEEUGIA AND ASSISI. Heaven ! It's the best thing they can do for us ! lie is ill now — the sooner it is over the better !" And all this coarsely, amidst the jeers of his wife and of five or six laborers there. — This is a veritable Jacobin household as with us in 1790. Yesterday in a public vehicle I had three hours' conversation with my two companions, one a brass- lamp maker of Perugia and the other a peasant and tile-maker. The former is a well-to-do mechanic ; he went to Turin as one of a deputation to Victor Em- manuel, and is a passionate partisan of Ital}^ Hia son who had completed his studies and become a painter, enlisted and is serving as a sergeant against the Calabrian brigands. The tile - maker had ten nephews in the army. They were not disposed to be reserved and gave me innumerable details. According to these men every thing is going ou well. Out of twenty persons, fifteen are for the gov- ernment, four for the pope and one republican. The republicans have entirely lost ground ; they are re- garded as fanatics (fantastici). The peasantry are daily coming round to the government ; they are al- ready hunting out refractory conscripts (renitenti) and bringing them back. The conscription was a sore trial to them, but they are getting used to it. In the army the young men eat good food, return home strong and active, and with a martial spirit ; the effect is wonder- ful on the young girls, and consequently on the young men, and yet again on their parents and neighbors. Taxes are unquestionably more onerous ; but every- body works and doubly profits by it. People are building and repairing. Spoleto is completely reno- vated ; gas has been introduced at Perugia ; the rail- road to Ancona progresses and there is great excite- ment everywhere. " The farthings circulate !" ( Tutt' { quaitrini lavorano.) The entire middle class is enthusiastic in this sense PATIUOTISM. 32 In a population of 82,000 at Periigiii there are I-IOC members of the national guard, including merchants, shop-keepers and prominent, well-established people. They do patrol duty with the soldiers, drill, subject themselves to inconveniences, and contentedly. " I Lave made sacrifices for my coimtry," said my banker, " and am willing to make still greater ones." There are no more municipal or provincial rivalries ; Flor- ence has sent back to Pisa in token of fraternity the chains of its harbor which she had formerly captured. T point to an officer passing and ask if he is not a Piedmontese. "No more Piedmontese — we are all mixed up in the army — nobody now but Italians!" They have all the confidence aud illusions of 1789. On remarking that the Italian army had not yet de- monstrated its capacity : — " We fought at Milan in 18J:8, and in three days, drove off alone the Austrians. \Ye fought also at Perugia, against the Swiss, who massacred the women and children ; — I was then in the cavalry. There was a fortress against the town, — look, that is all there is left of it ; — Ave are converting it into a museum. No, no, we have no fear of the Aus- trians. We had seventy thousand volunteers against them ia 1859. In two years more the peasantry will vise to a man and we will drive them out of Venice." (Seven thousand volunteers have become seventy. But the people are poetic ; the more they magnify, the more they exalt themselves.) There is the same anti-ecclesiastic rigidity as in our revolution. According to my two companions " the priests are scamps (hlrhanti) ; the government does right in confiscating the property of the monks ; it ought to di'ive away every rascal who openly agitates against it. Before 1859 they were all-powerful and meddled in domestic matters ; they were tried by a special tribunal and never punished. Now they lower their heads; two of them have lately beeu condemned 34 PEItUGIA AND ASSISl for crimes and everybody rejoices. They did nothing but harm. The beggars, children, and adults, who beset us at Assisi are of their providing, physically as well as morally. They corrupted women, encour- aged idleness through their mendicity, and main- tained a state of ignorance ; but now instruction vh everywhere diJffused, each commune having its owd school ; — there are thirteen in Assisi, which has but three thousand inhabitants." A beggar attached him- self to our vehicle. " Be off, you knave ! go to the monks — among them you will find your father !" The beggar with his obsequious, sly Italian smile replied, " No, signor, I do not belong to this part of the coun- try, give me a little something." Many trifling circumstances bear witness to this resentment against the clergy. Lately, at Foligno, in a masquerade, the pope and the cardinals were trav- estied in the streets with shouts, laughter and uni- versal excitement. — In Perugia, alongside of San Do- menico, stands a blackfriar's convent converted into a military barracks. The soldiers, on entering it, pierced the frescos of the inner wall with their bay- onets. The lacerated figures are now falling off in fragments ; one can scarcely distinguish, here and there, the forms of some of the personages. The smoke of a soldier's kitchen suffices to destroy the finest group. — A quarter of an hour after this, at San Pietro, a priest informed us with a sad look, that on entering that place they had also torn away paintings in another chapel. He uttered this with a melancholy, humiliated aspect ; the ecclesiastics here do not speak in the same tone as at Rome. — These outrages are similar to those of our revolution : the layman and military barracks are substitutes without transition for the ecclesiastic and the monastery. This antag- onism provokes thought ; there is little probability of its ending ; it has never ended in France ; the revolu- MODEIiN llEFORMS. 35 tiou and Catholicism still remain under arms and in battle array. Protestant peoples, the English for ex- ample, are more fortunate. Luther has there recon- ciled the Church and society. Marrying the priest, making of him by education and habit a sort of more serious layman, elevating the layman to reflection arid criticism by giving him the Bible and an exegesis, suppressing the ascetic portion of religion and infus- ing into society the conscience as moral guide, is the greatest of modern revolutions. The two spirits har- monize in Protestant countries ; they remain hostile in Catholic countries and, unfortunately, to their hostility one sees no limit. Another merchant, an officer, and my purveyor with whom I chat entertains me with similar views. What an animated and complete under- standing these Italians have ! Here is a domestic who tells me all about himself, his marriage and his views of Hfe, who reasons and judges hke a cultivated man. — A miserable guide, half beggar, in a shop at Assisi ex- pressed well-connected opinions and explained to me, skeptically, the state of the country. " The peasantry hunt after the conscripts, " he said " because they are jealous ; their sons have been taken and they wish to have the sons of others cauprht. The rich alwavs eat up the poor while the poor never eat up the rich." There is a great readiness of conception and prom^pt- ness of expression ; such a people is always prepared for political discussion ; you notice it in the cafes ; the ardor and copiousness of discussion are surprising, and likewise its good sense. In the upheaval of a gen- eral revolution and of a vacillating government every town is self-administered and self-supporting. They agree generally in this, that the liberal party is progressing. According to my friend the young officer the number of the refractory diminishes every year ; this year some borough near Orvieto, where he is in garri- son, no longer possesses one. At Eoligno, where he S6 PERUGIA AND ASSIST. has lived, only two or tliree old papal families are named i fcliey are avaricious and behind the age, one being re lated to a cardinal ; the rest of tiie town is for Yictor Rmmanuel. Ecclesiastical property is rented at low rates to the peasantry, which reconciles them to the government ; the result will be a sale of it to them and :hen they will become openly patriotic. In sliort the enemy of the new order of things is the clergy, monks who are reduced to fifteen cents a day and priests wdio advise j^oung men to avoid the conscrip- tion, and to pass over the Boman fi^ontier. — Finally, like almost all the Italians I have seen, he is Catholic and a believer; lie blames the "Diritto^ a violent jacobin journal, and thinks that religion may accommodate itself to the civil government. What lie disapproves of is the temporal authority of the clergy ; let the priests confine themselves to their functions as priests, admin- ister the sacraments and set an example of good be- havior ; once under proper restraint they will become better. At Orvieto, where he lives, many of the children in the town are attributed to the monks, which is an evil. He admires our clergy, so correct, and never pro- voking scandal; lie approves of tlie prescribed cos- tume of our priests,— in Italy they are only required to dress in black. He ridicules those Eoman mo7isu/-., nore, set to watch over morals and superintend the theatres, who enter the box of the leading danseuse in order to forbid her to indulge in caprices. Accord- ing to him such an order of things excites people against religion itself. At Sienna, in the shop-windows, we have just seen a translation of "le Maudit," and the " Vie de Jesus," the last work of Strauss, and an engrav- ing representing Truth overwhelming obstinate and hypocritical priests. My impression of the country between Perugia and Sienna is that it is similar to France. The villagers are about as well clad as our own ; they have more horses, 11ESEMBL.VNCE TO FHANCE. 37 and manj among them are landowners. Tlio aspect of the villages and of the small towns reminds one of our South. The countrj is of the same structure — small valleys and moderate elevations — the soil seeming to be as well cultivated. The garrison anecdotes Avhich my friend the officer relates to me and the interiors of the inns and of the middle-class tenements with which I glance recall trait for trait a journey I made last year in the middle and south of France. To complete the resemblance soldiers are everywhere seen on the road, on furlough, or proceeding to join their regi- ments ; the people are as gay and their conversation as animated as with us. The boroughs and smaU towns wear that provincial aspect, somewhat dull and tolerably clean, which we are so familiar with. It might be called a backward France, a younger sister that is growing and " catching up " mth the elder. If we consider the contending parties, on the one side the nobles and clergy, and on the other the middle and commercial class, people of education and the liberal professions, and between the two the peasantry which the revolution is trying to emancipate from traditional influences, the resemblance becomes striking. To complete it, it is evident by their conversation, that their model is France ; they repeat our ancient ideas and confine themselves to reading our books. Slight- ly cultivated people know French and scarcely ever English or German : our language is the only one like theirs, and besides, they, like ourselves, require gaj'ety, wit, the agreeable and even license ; one finds in their hands not only our good authors but our second- class romances, our minor newspapers and low-class Hteratm'e. Their great reforms all take place in the same sense; they have imitated our coinage and our measures ; they are organizing a salaried church with- out private property, primary schools, a national guard and the rest. S8 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. I am aware of tlie drawbacks to our system, — tlie suppression of all superior ranks ; the reduction of all ambitions and of all mind to the commonplace ideas and enterprises of life ; the abolition of the proud and lofty sentiments of one brought up in command, thc3 protector and natural representative of those around him ; the universal multiplication of the envious, nar* row-minded, insipid bourgeois as described by Henri Monnier ; all the wear and tear, vileness and impoverish- ment of head and heart from which aristocratic coun- tries are exempt. Nevertheless, such as it is, their form of civilization is passable and preferable to many others, and natural enough to Latin populations ; and France, which is now the first of Latin nations, takes the lead with its revolution and its civil code among its neighbors. This social structure consists in this : a great central government with a powerful army, heavy imposts and a vast corps of functionaries restrained by honor and who do not peculate ; — a small portion of land to each peasant, besides schools and other facilities to enable him to mount upward to a higher class if he has capa • city ; — a hierarchy of public offices open to the ambi- tion of the middle class, all unfairness being limited through the organization of examinations and competi- tions, all aspiration being kept within bounds and satis- fied by promotion which is slow but sure ; — in short the almost equal partition of all desirable things so that every one may have a share — nobody a very large one — and almost all one of small or mediocre propor- tions; and, above all, internal securitj", a fair sum of justice and of fame, and national glory. All this goes to make up a partially instructed, very well protected, tolerably regulated and very inert bourgeois, whose sole thought is to pass from an income of two thousand francs a year to one of six thousand. In a word a mul- titude of the half-cultivated and the half -rich, twentv THE MODEL BOURGEOIS. 3S or thirty millions of iiitlivIJuals passably contented, carefully penned, drilled and restrained, and who, when necessity calls, can be launched forth in a single body. Taking things in gross it is about what men have thus far found to bo best ; nevertheless we must wait a century to see England, Austria and America CHAPTEE y. ^ROM PEIllGIATC SIENNA.— ASPECT OF SIENNA.— TKANSITION IfllO]^ A REPUBLICAN TO A MONAECIIICAL SYSTEM.— iMEDLEVAL MONU MENTS.— THE CATHEDRAL.— ITALIAN -GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE.- NICHOLAS OF PISA.— EARLY SCULPTURE.— APPRECIATION OF FOl^ IN THE RENAISSANCE. Sienna, April 8. — The country becomes flat between Chinsi and Sienna ; we enter Tuscany ; marshes in the distance spread out their dingy and sickly verdure. A little farther on there are low hills and then gray slopes covered with the black twisted sprouts of the vine ; it is a meagre and flat French landscape. An old city surrounded with brown walls appears at the left, on a hill, and we then enter Sienna. It is an old republic of the middle ages, and often on the maps of the sixteenth century, I had contemplated its abrupt silhouette, bristling v/ith bastions, crowded with fortresses and filled with evidences of public and private contention. Public wars against Pisa Florence and Perugia, private wars among the bourgeoisie the nobles and the people, street combats, massacres in the town-hall, violations of the constitution, exile of all no- bles capable of using arms, exile of four thousand arti- sans, proscriptions, confiscations, wholesale executions, plots of the exiled against the city, popular insurrec- tions, despair carried even to the surrender of liberties and submission to a foreign yoke, sudden and furious rebellions, clubs similar to those of the Jacobins, asso- ciations like those of the carbonari, a desperate siege like that of Warsaw, and systematic depopulation like that of Poland, — nowhere has life been so tragic. From two hundred thousand inhabitants the popula- tion of the city fell to six thousand. The enmities re- SIENNA. 41 quired to exhaust a people of such vivacity cannot be told. Of all human creatures the feudal Italian was the most richly endowed with an active will and con- centrated i^assions, and he bled himself, and was bled, to the last drop in his veins before sinking down into the bed of monarchical tranquilKty. Cosmo II., in or- der to remain master, destroyed by starvation, war and executions fifty thousand peasants. At this epoch we see in engravings, defiling on the republican jpiazza, pompous cavalcades, mythological chariots, reviews and the livery of the new prince. The artist indulges in interminable adulation on the margin of his picture. Servile manners, somnolency, worn out gallantry and universal inertia become established. Sienna is re- duced to a provincial town, visited by tourists. I am told by an ecclesiastical acquaintance that when he came here in 1821 the lifelessness and ignorance of the place were complete. Tv/o days in a vettura were necessary in order to go from Sienna to Florence. A noble before setting out on his journey confessed him- self and made his will. There was not a library, not a book. One day my clerical friend, who is hberal and in- telligent, subscribes to two French newspapers. Some one pays him a visit ; " What, have you a French newS' paper !" The visitor takes hold of it and feels the miraculous godsend. Twenty minutes after this the ecclesiastic goes out for a walk. The first person he en- counters exclaims, " Is it true that you have a French newspaper?" and then another who utters the same thing, the report having spread instantaneously like a ray of light in a chamber closed for a century. A town thus preserved is like a Pompeii of the middle ages. You ascend and descend steep narrow streets paved with stone and bordered with monumental houses. A few still retain their towers. In the vicinity of the Piazza they succeed each other in rows, forming lines of enormous bosses, low porches and curioua '^ PERUGIA AND ASSISI. masses of brick pierced v/itli occasional windows Several of the palaces seem like bastions. The Piazza is surrounded with them; no sight more aptly suggests to the imagination the municipal and violent customs of ancient times. This square is irregular in shape and in surface, and is peculiar and striking like all natural objects that have not been deformed or reformed by ad- ministrative discipline. Facing it, is the Palazzo Pub- lico, a massive town-hall adapted to resist sudden at- tacks and for the issue of proclamations to the crowd assembled in the open square. Frequently have these been cast from these ogive windows and likewise the bodies of the men killed in the seditions. The cornice bristles with battlements ; defence in these days is often encountered under ornament. To the left of this the symmetrical form of a gigantic tower with its double expansion of battlements rises to a prodigious height ; it is the tower of the city which plants on its summit its saint and its standard and speaks afar to distant cities. At its base the Gaja fountain which in the fourteenth century, amid universal acclamation, brought water for the first time to the public square, stands framed in by one of the most elegant of marble baldachins. It was growing late and I entered the cathedral for a moment. The impression is incomparable ; that of St. Peter's at Eome does not approach it : a surprising richness and sincerity of invention, the most admirable of gothic flowers — but of a new gothic that has bloomed in a better clime, in the midst of genius of a iiigher culture ; more serene, more beautiful, more re- ligious and yet healthy, and which is to our cathedrals what the poems of Dante and Petrarch are to the songs of our trouveres ; a pavement and pillars with stones of alternate courses of white and black marble, a legion of animated statues, a natural combination of gothio and roman forms, corinthian capitals bearing a laby- SIENNA CATHEDRAL. 43 rill til of gilded arcades and arches panelled with azure and istars. The declining sun streams in at the door and the enormous vault with its forest of columns spar-; kles iQ the shadow above the crowd kneeling in the naves and chapel, and around the columns. The multitude in the profound darkness swarms indistinctly up to the foot of the altar, which, all at once, with its bronzoa and candelabra and the damask copes of its priests and the prodigal magnificence of its jewels and tapers, rises upward like a bouquet of light of magical splendor. April 8. — I passed half of the day in this cliurch ; one might easily pass a whole day there. For the first time elsewhere than in engravings I find an Italian- Gothic, the earliest of two renaissance periods, less pure than the other but more spontaneous. A grand portal decked with statues projects above its three entrances three pointed pediments, over these pediments three pointed gables, around these gables four pointed spires and all of them crenelated with openings ; but the arch of the doors is Boman : the fagade, in spite of its elongated angles, has latin rem- iniscences : the decoration is not of the filagree order and the statues are not a multitude. The architect loves the up-springing forms derived from the north, but he likewise loves the solid forms bequeathed to him by ancient tradition. If, in the interior, he masses columns together in piers, if he spins out and stirrounds the windows with trefoils and mullions, if he curves the svindows into ogives, he suspends aloft the aerial rotun- dity of the dome, he garlands his capitals with the co- < rinthian acanthus and diffuses throughout his work an air of joyousness and strength through the firmness of his forms, an appropriate distribution of light and a lustrous assortment of marbles. His church is christian, but of a Christianity other than that of the noiiih, less grandiose and less impassioned, but less morbid and less violent, as if the sprightliness innate in the Italian 44 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. genius and the early impulse of laic culture had tempered the sublime phrensj of the middle ages, and preserved for the soul a hope on earth by leaving to it an issue in heaven. Of what avail are rules ? and how insignifi- cant are the barriers of the schools ? Here are men who stood with one foot in the renaissance and the othei in the middle age, diverted both ways, so that their work could not fail to miscarry and contradict itself. It does not miscarry, and its contradictions harmonize. And for this reason, that, in their breast,both sentiments operated energetically and sincerely ; that suffices for good work ; life begets life. You enter. The same marriage of ideas reappears in all the details. On each side of the door they have set up two admirable corinthian columns, but they have appropriated the Greek column by clothing the shaft with a profusion of small nude figures, hippogriffs, birds, and acanthus leaves interlaced and winding about to the top. — Three paces farther on are two charming holy-water fonts, two small columns decked with grapes, figures and garlands, each bearing on its top a cup oi white marble. One, they say, is antique ; the other must be of about the beginning of the fifteenth cen- tury. The heads and torsions of these small figures remind one of Albert Durer ; the feet and knees are some- what salient ; they are naked females with their hands tied behind their backs ; the artist in order to obtain true action does not fear to slightly disfigure the breast. Thus is developed between Nicholas of Pisa and Jacopo della Querela an entire school of sculpture, a complete art, already perfect like a healthy lively child struggling in its catholic swaddling clothes. Finally, there is the celebrated pulpit of Nicholas of Pi- sa, the renovator of sculpture (1266). What can be more precious than these early works of the modern mind ? Our true ancestors are here, and one craves to know the way in which, at this early dawn, they compre- THE PULPIT. 4fl liended man as we of to-day regard liim ; for, wlieu an artist creates a type, it is as if he expressed by flesL and bones Lis conception of human nature ; and this conception once popular, the rest follows. I have no words to express the originality and richness of inven- tion displayed in this pidpit. It is as peculiar as it is beautiful. The pedestals consist of lionesses, each holding a lamb in its jaws, or sucked by its young ; the quaint symbolism of the middle ages is here apparent ; but from the bodies of these lionesses spring eight small, pure white columns expanding into a rich cluster of leaves, entirely original in taste, and which join to- gether in trefoils supporting a sort of octagonal arch or coffer of the simplest and most natural form possi- ble. On the entablature of each column sits a woman ; several wear the crowns of empresses, and all hold in- fants that are whispering to them in their ears. One loses sight of their being of stone, so animated is their expression ; it is more decided than in the antique. In this joj'ousness of primitive invention the new concep- tions so suddenly obtained are dwelt on to excess ; it is a pleasure to perceive, for the first time, a soul, and the attitude which manifests that soul ! Ideas did not abound in those days, and they clung all the closer to those they had. Through a striking innovation the body, neck, and head, somewhat too large, have a sort of Doric heaviness ; but this only adds to their vigor. Leaving behind him the meagre, ascetic saint, the art- ist, in imitation of the antique bas-reliefs, akeady con- structs the firm bony framework, fine, well-proportioned limbs, and the healthy flesh of renaissance figures. In northern sculptures, the physiognomies and attitudes of northern artists, when their genius blooms out in the fifteenth century,'^ are delicate, pensive, emotional, and * See the sculptures of the church of Brou, of Strasbc lu'g cathedral md the tomb of the Duke of Brittany at Nantes. 46 PERUGIA AND ASSIST. always ingeniously personal. These, on the contraiy display the simplicity, breadth, and gravity of ancient pagan heads. It seems that the Italian, as he at this moment first opens his mouth, resumes the grave, man- ly discourse arrested twelve hundred years before on the lips of his brothers of Greece and of his ancestors of Rome. On the panels of the pulpit a labyrinth of crowded figures — a long octagonal procession, the Nativity, the Passion, and the Last Judgment, — envelop the marble with their marble covering. Apostles and virgins stand or sit on the angles, uniting and separating the diverse incidents of the legend. The margins are filled with a delicate and rich vegetation of marble inter- twined with arabesque and with foliage, a most luxuri- ous display of light and complicated ornaments. One recoils astonished at this richness, and then perceives that he is walking on figures. The entire floor of the church is incrusted with them ; it is a mosaic of charac- ters seemingly traced with a pencil on the broad slabs. There are some of all ages, from the birth of art to its maturity. Figures, processions, combats, castles, and landscapes ; the feet tread on scenes and men belonging to the fourteenth and the two following centuries. The most ancient, indeed, are rigid, like feudal tapestries : Samson rending the lion's jaw, Absalom suspended by his hair, with large, open, idiotic eyes, and the murdered Innocents, — reminding one of the manikins of the mis- sals : but, as one advances he sees life animating the limbs. The grand white sibyls, on the black pavement display the nobleness and gravity of goddesses. Innu- merable heads impress one with their breadth and firmness of character. The artist as yet sees nothing in the human organism but its general frameworli ; he is not distracted as we are by a multiplicity of gi'ada- tions, by the knowledge of an infinity of spiritual modi- fications and innmnerable changes of physiognomy. BECCAFUMT. 47 For this reason he can produce beings who, through their calmness, seem to be superior to the agitations of life. A primitive soul creates primitive souls. In the time of Raphael this art is complete : and the gi-eatest of the three niello artists on stone, Beccafumi, has covered the space around the high altar and the pave- ment of the cupola with his designs. His half-naked Eve, his Israelites slain for espousing the Midianite women, his Abraham sacrificing, are superb figures of a wholly pagan conception, — often with torsos and at- titudes like those of Michael Angelo, but yet simple. It is only at that time that they knew how to make bodies.* The groat man himself has worked here : they attrib- ute to him an admirable little chapel in which small figures appear, ranged above each other in shell niches amongst light arabesques and winding over the white marble. His predecessors, the most glorious restorers of art, keep him company ; under the altar, in a low chapel, a " St. John" by Donatello, and vigorous fig- ures with knotted muscles and contorted necks impress one with their energy and youthfulness. To see this pavement, these walls, these altars thus filled and crowded, these files of figures and of heads ascending on the efflorescences of the capitals, extending in lines along the friezes and covering the entire field of view, it is evident that the arts of design were the spontaneous language of this epoch, that men spoke the language without effort, that it is the natural mould of their thcught, that this thought and this imagination, fecund for the first time, blossomed outwardly with an in- exhaustible generation of forms, that they are like youths whose tongues are unloosed and who say too much because they have not spoken before. Too many beautiful or curious things is a constantly * See the cartoons in the Institute oftlic Fine Arts at Sienna. 48 PEBUGIA AND ASSIST. recurring remark here ; for example the Lihraria ex tending to the cathedral and built at the end of the fif teenth century. Here are ten frescoes by Pinturicchio^ the history of Pius II., several figures of females very chaste and very elegant, the work however being still literal and dry. The painter preserves the costumes ol the time, the emperor being represented in a gilded robe with the exaggerated display of the middle ages Pinturicchio employed Raphael on his cartoons ; here the passage from the old to the new school is appar- ent ; from master to pupil the distance is infinite, and eyes that have just left the Vatican are fully sensible of it CHAPTEE VI. niE ORIGIN OFPAINTrNG AT SIENNA AND PISA.— CREATIVE ENfiR(i\ IN SOCIETY AND IN THE ARTS.— DUCCIO DA SIENNA.— SIMONB MEMMI.— THE LORENZETTI.— MATTEO DA SIENNA. This Sienna, so fallen, was the earlj instructress in, and mistress of, the beautiful. Here and at Pisa we find the most ancient school. Nicholas of Pisa is Sien- nese bj his father. The revivor of mosaic art in the thirteenth centur}- is Jacopo da Turrita, a Franciscan monk of Sienna. The oldest Italian painting that is known is a crucified Christ with lank limbs and droop- ing head in the church at Assisi by Giunta, a Pisan."^ Here, even, at San Domenico, Guido of Sienna painted in 1271 the piu'e sweet face of a Madonna which already far surpasses the mechanical Byzantine art. This cor- ner of Tuscany had freed itself fi'om feudal barbarism before the rest of Italy. Abeady in 1100, Pisa, the first of maiitime republics, traded and fought throughout the Levant, creating a school of architecture and building its cathedral. A century later Sienna attained to its full power and, in 12G0, crushed Florence at the battle of Montaperto. They were so many new Athens, com- mercial and belligerent like the ancient city, and genius and love of beauty were born with them as with the old city in contact with enterprise and danger. Con- fined to our great administrative monarchies, restrained by the long literary and scientific traditions of whicL we wear the chain, we no longer find within us the for(!e and creative audacity which then animated mankind. We are oppressed by our work itself; we limit with our * 1236. Ho wholly acquired bis art hero, about 1310. ^^ PEllUGM AND ASSISI. own hand our own field of action. We aspire to con- tribute only one stone to tlie vast structure which suc- cessive generations have been erecting for so many centuries. We do not know what active energies tha human heart and intellect can generate, all that tho human plant can put forth of root, branch and flower or encountering the soil and the season it needs. When the State was not a lumbering machine composed of bureaucratic springs and only intelligible to pure reason, but a city evident to the senses and adapted to the or- dinary capacity of the individual, man loved it, not spasmodically as at present, but daily, in every thought, and the part he took in public matters exalting his heart and understanding, planted in him the sentiments and ideas of a citizen and not those of a bourgeois. A shoemaker gave his money in order that the church of bis city might be the most beautiful ; a weaver polished his sword in the evening determined that he would be not the subject but one of the lords of a rival city. At a certain degree of tension every soul is a vibrating cord ; it is only necessary to touch it to make it utter most beautiful tones. Let us picture to ourselves this nobleness and this energy diffused through every strata from top to bottom of a civic community ; let us add to this an estabUshed, increasing prosperity, that self-con- fidence, that sentiment of joy which man experiences in a consciousness of strength ; let us banish from be- fore our eyes that load of traditions and acquisitions which to-day embarrass us, as well as our wealth ; let us consider man free and self-surrendered in that deseit due to degeneracy and we will then understand why here, as in the time of ^Eschylus, the arts arose in the midst of public affairs ; why a fallow soil, bristUng with every political brier produced more than our well-tilled and registered fields ; why partisans, combatants and navigators at the height of their perils, their preoccu- pations and their ignorance, created and revived beauti- DUCOIO. 51 ftil forms with an instinctive certiiinty, a fecui diiy ot genius to wliicli the leisure and the erudition oi' the present day cannot attain. Slowly and painfully, beneath sculpture and architec- ture, painting develops itseK ; this is a more complicated art than the others. Time was necessary in order to discover perspective ; a more sensual paganism was necessary in order to appreciate color. Man, at this epoch, is still quite christian ; Sienna is the city of the Virgin and places itseK under her protection as Athens under that of Pallas ; with an entirely different moral standard and different legends the sentiment is the same, the local saint corresponding to the local divinity. Wien Duccio in 1311 finished his Madonna the people in its joy came and took him fi'om his studio and bore him in procession to the church ; the bells rang and manj^ of the crowd carried tapers in then* hands. The painter inscribed under his picture, " Holy Mother of God, grant peace to the people of Sienna ; grant life to Duccio since he has thus painted thee !"" His vii'gin testifies to a still unskilful hand, resembling the paint- ing of missals ; but around her and the infant she holds in her arms are several heads of saints abeady singu- larly beautiful and calm. Twenty-seven compartments, the entire story of Christ placed in the chapel facing it, accompany them. The sky is of gold and golden aurioles envelop the small figures. In this light the figures, almost black, seem like a remote vision, and when formerly they were over the altar, the kneehng people, who caught distant glimpses of their grave grouping, must needs have felt the mysterious emotion, the subHme anxiety of christian faith before these human apparitions profiled in multitudes in the bright- Qess of eternal day. * Mater sancta Dei, sis causa Senis requiei Sis Ducio vita, te quia pinixit ita. 53 PEliUGIA AND ASSIST. At tliG Institute of tlie Fine Arts are tlie pictures oi Duccio and of his contemporaries and successors, the entire series of the old masters of Sienna, and almost all taken from convents. In these pictures the nuns have scratched out the eyes of the demons and marred the faces of the persecutors with their nails and scissors. There is but little progress apparent; the pictui'e is yet an object of religion rather than of art, as may be well conceived by these thoughtless mutilations. It is at the hotel-de-ville of Sienna that this art is the most expressive. A gallery is always a gallery and works of art, like the productions of nature, lose half their spirit when removed from their milieu. They must be seen along with their surroundings on the great wall whose nudity they covered, in the light of the ogive windows which illuminated them, and in the halls where the magistrates sat attired like their own personages. One might pass a couple of months in this palace studying feudal manners and customs without exhausting the ideas it provides : figures, cos- tumes, youthful cavaliers and veteran men-at-arms, lines of battle and religious processions. Colorless, grave, sombre even, rigid and stiff, such are the terms that enter the mind before this art. The fourteenth century is incarnated in these paintings ; we feel the constant presence of strife, the forced adhesion to the breast of danger, the abortive aim at more blooming beauty, and a freer harmony. This is the epoch of horrible intestine wars, of condottieri and the Visconti; of deliberate torments and atrocious tyrannies, of a tottering faith and a crumbling mysticism and of the half-visible, experimental and fruitless renaissance. With his tragic, skeptical, sensual tales clad in Cicero- nian periods, Boccaccio is tJie faitLful image of ifc/^ * Compare his '''Bride of the King of Garbe" with that of Li Fontaine. SIENNESE ARTISTS. 58 In these are the characters; and as[)irations of the time. Simone Memmi, the painter of Laura and the fi'iend of Petrarch, has painted in the great council chamber a Virgin under a canopy surrounded by saints, grave and noble heads in the style of Giotto ; and a little farther on, Guido Eicci, a captain of the day, on a caparisoned horse — a realistic personage ; in these we see painting becoming laic.'^ One of the Lorenzetti has heaped up near this conflicts of armor and combats of people ; and Spinello Spinelli, in the prior's hall, has represented the victory of Alexander II. over Frederic Barbarossa, the emperor tying stretched on his back before the pope,t also naval combats and processions of troops ; — art here is taking a historic and realistic turn. Ambrogio Lorenzetti, in the hall of archives, has portrayed good and bad government,}: a defile oi grand personages beneath a reclining female, already beautiful, draped in white with a laurel branch over her blonde tresses, all this according to that Aristotle so denounced by Petrarch, and so dear to the liberal' minded now multiplying ; — it seems as if painting was running into a philosophical vein. I pass many others in which the taste for actual life, for local history, and for the antique — everything approaching the renais- sance — is visible ; but it is in vain — they fall short, merely standing on its threshold. A St. Barbara by Matteo da Sienne, in 1478, in the Church of St. Domi- nic, soft and pure but without relief and surrounded by gold, is simply a hieratic figure. And Leonardo da Vinci is already twenty-six ! How comprehend so long a halt ! How comes it that after Giotto, among so many groupings, painters do not succeed in putting on their canvases one solid form of flesh with life in it ? What stopped them half-way in spite of so many trials, after such a universal and happy early inspiration? * From 1316 to 1328. \ UOO. t 1340. ^4 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. The question becomes irresistible wLen one contem- plates in this same palace, in the Institute of the Fine Arts, and in San Domenico, the frescoes of a complete artist, Socloma, one of Raphael's contemporaries, and the first master of the country. His scourged Christ is a superb nude torso, animated and suffering like an antique gladiator; his "St. Catherine in Ecstasy," his two male saints and female saint between them under an open portico, all his paintings, force the others back at once into the indeterminate region of incomplete, defective beings incapable of life. Once more why, having discovered painting, did men pass a hundred and fifty years with closed eyes without seeing the body? We must see Florence and Pisa. CHAPTEK VII. PROM FLORENCE TO PISA.- SCENERY.— PISAN ARCHITECTURE.— TUB DirOMO, LEANING TOWER, BAPTISTERY AND CAMPO-SANTO.- FAINTINGS OP TUE XIV. CENTURY.— PLETRO D'ORVIETO.— Sl'J- NELLO SPINELLI, PIETRO LORENZETTI, AND THE OKCAGNA.- RELATIONSHIP OP THE ART OP THE XIV. CENTURY TO ITS SOCIETY.— WHY ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT REMAINS STATIONARY. Flokexce, April 10. — I passed my first day in the Ufiizi : —but yon do not require me to dwell on it now. I must not dissip.ate my impressions ; I have already had trouble enough to render them. On the following day I, accordingly, visited Pisa absorbed by the question which occupied me in quit- ting Sienna. It is only such matters that fill up time in travelling. One moves along wrapped up in one's ideas and other matters are let go. It seems to me that a man divides himself up into two parts : on the one hand a lower animal, a sort of necessary mechanical drudge who eats., drinks and walks for him without his knowing it, settles down comfortably in inns and in carriages, endures without letting him perceive it dis- agreeable, petty annoyances, the platitudes of life, and attends to all that pertains to his ordinary condition ; on the other hand a mind that is excited and strained all day by a vehement curiosity, stirred and traversed by germs of ideas, discarded and revived, in order to comprehend the sentiments of great men and of an- cient epochs. What made them feel in this way ? Is it true that they did feel in this way? So from ques- tion to question, at the end of a week, one listens to them and sees them face to face, forgetting the dnidge. who becomes awkward and does his duty negligenth". It is all the same to me — and to you : — but I am talking at random, — we are going to Pisa. A Tuscan landscape, agi-eeable and noble. The 56 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. grain, in blade, glows with freshness ; above it run filefc of elms, loaded with vines, bordering the channels by which they are irrigated. The country is an orchard fertilized by artificial streams. The waters flow co- piously from the mountains and wind about limpid and blue in their too capacious bed of boulders. Signs ol prosperity everywhere. The mountain slopes are dot ■ ted with thousands of white spots, so many villas and summer resorts, each with its bouquet of chestnut, olive and pine trees. Marks of taste and of comfort are evident in those that we observe in passing ; the farm-houses have a portico on the ground-floor, or on the first story, wherein to enjoy the evening breeze. All is productive ; cultivation extends far up the moun- tain and is continued here and there by the primitive forest. Man has not reduced the earth to a fleshless skeleton ; he has preserved, or renewed its vestment of verdure. As the train recedes, these terraces of soil, each with its own tint and culture, and farther on, the pale, vapory bordering of mountains, encompass the plaiji like a garland. The effect is not that of a grand- iose beauty, but harmonious and regulated. For the first time in Italy I see a true river in a true plain ; the Arno, yellow and turbulent, rolls along be- tween two long ranges of dingy houses. A mournful, neglected, meagrely populated, lifeless city, calKng to mind one of our towns in decay, or set aside by a wan- dering civilization, like Aix, Poitiers or Eennes ; — such is Pisa. There are two Pisas : one in which people have lapsed into ennui, and live from hand to mouth since the decadence, which is in fact the entire city, except a re- mote corner ; the other is this corner, a marble sepul- chre where the Duomo, Baptistery, Leaning Tower and Campo-Santo silently repose like beautiful dead beings. This is the genuine Pisa, and in these relics of a departed life, one beholds a world. PISA, ^t A renaissance before the renaissance, a second bud- ding almost antique of antique civilization, a preco- cious and complete sentiment of healthy, joyous beauty, a primrose after six centuries of snow — such are the ideas and the terms that rush through the mind. All is marble, and white marble, its immaculate brightness glowing in the azure. Everywhere appear grand, solid forms, the cupola, the full wall, balanced stories, the firmly-planted round or square mass ; but over these forms, revived from the antique, like delicate foliage re- freshing an old tree-trunk, is diffused an invention of their own in the shape of a covering of delicate columns supporting arcades that render the originality and grace of this architecture, thus renovated, indescribable. The most difficult thing in the arts is to discover a type of architecture. The Greeks and the middle ages produced one complete ; Imperial Eome and the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries produced one half- complete. In order to find other types we are obliged to abandon Europe and European history and consider those of Egypt, Persia, India or China. Usually they testify to a completed civilization, to a profound trans- formation of all instincts and of all customs. Keally, to change any conception of a thing so general as form, what a change must be effected in the human brain 1 Revolutions in painting and in Hterature have been much more frequent, much easier and much less sig- nificant. Figures traced on canvas, and characters portrayed in books will change five or six times with a people before its architecture can be changed. The mass to be moved is too great, and in the eleventh century, in the times of our first Capet kings, Pisa moves it without effort. There was a dawn then, as in Greece in the sixth century before Christ. Everything then burst forth radiantly like light at the first hour. "The Pisans," said Yasari, " being at the apex of their grandeur and 68 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. of their progress, being lords of Sardinia, Corsica and the island of Elba, and their city being filled with great and powerful citizens, brought from the most dis- tant places trophies and great spoil." At Byzantium, in the Orient, in ancient cities still filled with the ruins of Greek elegance and of Roman magnificence, umong Jews and Arabs their visitors and their cus- tomers, in contact with foreign ideas, this young com- munity started up and elaborated its own conceptions as formerly the Greek cities in contact with Plienicia, Carthage, the Lydians and the Egyptians. In 1083 in order to honor the Virgin, who had given them a vic- tory over the Saracens of Sardignia, they laid the foun- dations of their Duomo. This edifice is almost a Boman basilica, that is to say a temple surmounted by another temple, or, if you prefer it, a house having a gable for its fa§ade which gable is cut off at the peak to support another house of smaller dimensions. Five stories of columns entirely cover the facade with their superposed porticoes. Two by two they stand coupled together to support small arcades ; all these pretty shapes of white marble nnder their dark arcades form an aerial population of the utmost grace and novelty. Nowhere here are we con- scious of the dolorous reverie of the mediseval north ; it is the fete of a young nation which is awakening, and, in the gladness of its recent prosperity, honoring its gods. It has collected capitals, ornaments, entire columns obtained on the distant shores to which its wars and its commerce have led it, and these ancient fragments gnter into its work without incongruity ; for it is instinctively cast in the ancient mould, and only developed with a tinge of fancy on the side of finesse and the pleasing. Every antique form reap- pears, but reshaped in the same sense by a fresh and original impulse. The outer columns of the Greek THE CATHEDllAL OF PISA. 0^ temple are reduced, multiplied and uplifted in the air, and, £i"om a support have become an ornament. The lujman or Byzantine dome is elongated and its natural heaviness diminished under a crown of slender columns with a mitre ornament, which girds it midway with its delicate promenade. On the two sides of the great door two Corinthian columns are enveloped with luxu- rious foliage, calyxes and twdning or blooming acan- thus ; and from the threshold we see the church with its files of intersecting columns, its alternate courses of black and white marble and its multitude of slender and brilliant forms, rising upward like an altar of can- delabra. A new spirit appears here, a more delicate sensibility ; it is not excessive and disordered as in the north, and yet it is not satisfied with the grave sim- plicity, the robust nudity of antique architecture. It is the daughter of a pagan mother, healthy and gay, but more womanly than its mother. She is not yet an adult, sure in all her steps, — she is somewhat awkward. The lateral facades on the exte- rior are monotonous ; the cupola within is a reversed funnel of a peculiar and disagreeable form. The junction of the two arms of the cross is unsatisfactory and so many modernized chapels dispel the charm due to purity, as at Sienna. At the second glance however all this is forgotten, and we again regard it as a com- plete whole. Four rows of corinthian columns, sur- mounted with arcades, divide the church into five naves, and form a forest. A second passage, as richly crowded, traverses the former crosswise, and, above the beautiful grove, tiles of still smaller columns prolong and inter- sect each other in order to uphold in the air the pro- longation and intersection of the quadruple gallery. The ceihng is flat ; the windows are small, and for the most part, without sashes ; they allow the walls to le- tain the gi'andeui of their mass and the solidity of their 60 PEEUGIA AND ASSISI. position ; and among these long, straight and simple lines, in this natural light, the innumerable shafts glow with the serenity of an antique temple. It is not, how^ever, wholly an antique temple, and hence its peculiar charm : in the rear of the choir a grand figure of Christ in a golden robe, and the Virgin, and another saint, smaller in size, occupy the entire concave of the absis." His face is serene and sad ; on this golden background, in the paleness of the dim light, he looks like a vision. Countless paintings and structures of the middle ages assuredly correspond to ecstatic yearnings. — Other fragments indicate the de- cadence and utter barbarism out of which they sprung. One of the ancient bronze doors still remains covered with rude and horrible bronze bas-reliefs. Behold what the descendants of the statuaries preserved of antique tradition, what the human mind had become in the chaos of the tenth centurj^, at the time of the Hungarian invasions of Marozzia and of Theodora : sad, mournful, dwarfed, dislocated and mechanical figures, God the Father and six angels, three on one side and three on the other, all leaning at the same angle like the figures scribbled by children ; the twelve apostles ranged in file, six in front and six in the intermediate spaces, are like those round rings with holes in them for eyes and long appendages for arms which boys scrawl on the covers of their copy-books. On the other hand, the entrance doors, sculptured by John of Bologna (1602), are full of life : leaves of the rose, the vine, the medlar, the orange and the laurel, with their berries, fruits and flowers, amongst birds and animals, twine around and make frames for energetic and spirited figures and groups of an imposing aspect. This abundance of ac- curate living forms is peculiar to the sixteenth century : it discovered nature the same time as it discovered * By Jacopo Tuirita, the restorer of mcsaic art. THE BAPTISTERY AND LEANING TOWER. '51 man. Between these two doors occurs the labor of five centuries. Nothing more can bo added in relation to the Bap- tistery or the Leaning Tower ; the same ideas prevail in these, the same taste, the same style. The former is n simple, isolated dome, the latter a cyKnder, and each has an outward dress of small columns. And jet each has its own distinct and expressive physiognomy ; but description and writing consume too much time, and too many technical terms are requisite to define their differences. I note, simply, the inclination of the Tower. Some suppose that, when half constructed, the tower sank in the earth on one side, and that the architects continued on ; seeing that they did continue this deflection was only a partial obstacle to them. In any event, there are other leaning tow^ers in Italy, at Bologna, for example ; voluntarily or involuntarily this feeling for oddness, this love of paradox, this yielding to fancy, is one of the characteristics of the middle ages. In the centre of the Baptistery stands a superb font with eight panels ; each panel is incrusted with a rich complicated flower in full bloom, and each floAver is different. Around it a circle of large corinthian • columns supports round-arch arcades ; most of them are antique and are ornamented with antique bas;- reliefs : Meleager with his barking dogs, and the nude torsos of his companions in attendance on christiai^ mysteries. On the left stands a pulpit similar to thaf; of Sienna, the first work of Nicholas of Pisa (1260), a simple marble coffer supported by marble columns and covered with sculptures. The sentiment of force and of antique nudity comes out here in striking features. The sculptor comprehended the postures and torsions of bodies. His figures, somewhat massive, are grand and simple ; he frequently reproduces the tunics and folds of the Roman costume ; one of his nude person- «2 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. ages, a sort of Hercules bearing a young lion on Lis slioulders, lias the broad breast and muscular tension whicli the sculptors of the sixteenth century admired. What a change in human civilization, what an accelera- tion of it, had these restorers of ancient beauty, these young republics of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, these precocious creators of modern thought been leffc to themselves like the ancient Greeks ? had they fol- lowed their natural bent, had mystic tradition not intervened to limit and divert their efforts, had laic genius developed amongst them as formerly in Greece amidst hberal, rude and healthy institutions, and not, as two centuries later, in the midst of the servitude and corruptions of the decadence ? The last of these edifices, the Campo-Santo, is a cemetery, the soil of which, brought from Palestine, is holy ground. Four high walls of polished marble sur- round it with their white and crowded panels. Inside, a square gallery forms a promenade opening into the court through arcades trellised with ogive windows. It is filled with funereal monuments, busts, inscriptions and statues of every form and of every age. Nothing could be simpler and nobler. A framework of dark wood supports the arch overhead, and the crest of the roof cuts sharp against the crystal sky. At the angles are four rustling cypress trees, tranquilly swayed by the breeze. Grass is growing in the court with a wild freshness and luxuriance. Here and there a climbing flower twined around a column, a small rosebush, or a shrub glows beneath a gleam of sunshine. There is no noise ; this quarter is deserted ; only now and then is heard the voice of some promenader which rever- berates as under the vault of a church. It is the veritable cemetery of a free and christian city ; here, before the tombs of the great, people might well reflect over death and public affairs. The entire wall of the interior is covered with THE CAMP0-8ANT0. 03 frescoes ; tlie pictorial art of the fourteenth centiuy has no more complete charnel-house. The two schools of Florence and Sienna here combine, and it is a curious spectacle to observe their art halting between two tendencies, arrested in its powerlessness like a passive chrysalis no longer a worm and not yet a i;utterfly. The ancient sentiment of the divine work! is enfeebled, and the fiesh sentiment of the natural world is still weak. On the right of the entrance Pietro d'Orvieto has painted an enormous Christ, which, except tlie feet and the head, almost disappears under an immense disk representing the world and the revolving spheres ; this is the spirit of primitive sym- bolism. Alongside, in his story of the creation and of the first couple, Adam and Eve are big, well-fed, plump, realistic bodies, evidently copied fi'om the nude. A little farther on Cain and Abel, in their sheepskias, display vulgar countenances taken from hfe in tlie streets or in a fray. Feet, legs and composition remain barbarian, and this incipient realism goes no farther. On the other side, and with the same incon- gruities, a grand fresco by Pietro Lorenzetti repre- sents ascetic life. Forty or fifty scenes are given in the same picture : an anchorite reading, another in a f cave, another roosting in a tree, here one preaching with no other clothes on than his hair, and there one tempted by a woman and flogged by the devil. A few large heads with gray and white beards show the rus-tio clumsiness of ploughmen ; but the landscapes, the accessories, and even most of the figui'es, are grotesque ; the trees are feathers, and the rocks and the lions seem to belong to a five-fi-anc menagerie. Farther on Spi- nello d'Arezzo has painted the story of St. Ephesus. His pagans, half Romans and half cavaliers, wear aimor arranged and colored according to medifioval taste. Many of the attitudes in his battles are true, as, for instance, a man overthrown on his face, and another 64 PERtJGIA AND ASSISI. seized by the beard. Several are figures of tlie day for instance a pretty page in green holding a sword and a trim young squire in a blue pourpoint with pointed shoes and well-drawn calves ; observation and composition, an attempt to impart interest and dramatic variety, begin to appear. But it is only a beginning, it is simply a pasteboard sketch. Relief, flexibility action, the rich vitality of firm flesh, a feeling for a balanced organization and tlie innumerable laws which maintain natural objects is still remote ; we have imagery striving after, but which does not yet attain to art. Nothing more clearly illustrates this ambiguous state of minds than a fresco placed near one of the angles called the " Triumph of Death," by Orcagna .'^ At the base of a mountain a cavalcade of lords and ladies arrives ; these are the contemporaries of Frois- Bart : they wear the hoods and ermines and the gay va- riegated robes of the time, and have falcons and dogs and other appurtenances such as Valentine Yisconti went to find at the residence of Louis of Orleans. The heads are not less real : this delicate trim chatelaine on horseback, and veiled, is a true lady, pensive and melancholy, of the mediaeval epoch. These gay and powerful ones of the century suddenly come upon the corpses of three kings in the three degrees of corruption, each in his open grave, one swollen, the other gnawed by worms and serpents, and the other already exposing the bones of his skeleton. They halt and tremble : one of them leans over his horse's neck to obtain a better view, and another stops his nostrils ; this is a " morality*' like those then given in the playhouses. The artist aims to instruct his public, and to this effect he masses around the principal group every possible commentary. On the summit of the mountain are * Deceased about 1376. OUCAGNA's frescoes. 6£ mouks in their hermitages, oue reading and anothei milking a fawn, and, in their midst, are beasts of the desert, a weasel and a crane. " You good people who gaze on this, behold the Christian, contemplative life, the holy living disdained by the mighty of the earth ! " But death is present who restores the equilibrium : he is advancing in the shape of an old graybeard with a scythe in his hand in order to cut down the gay, the voluptuous, the young lords and ladies, fat and frizzled, who are diverting themselves in a grove. With a sort of cruel irony he is mowing down those who fear him, and is avoiding those who implore him ; a troop of the maimed, of crij^ples, of the blind, of beggars vainly summon him; his scythe is not for them. Such is the way of this frail lugubrious, miserable world; and the end to which it is tending is more lugubrious still. This is universal destruction, a yawning abyss into which all, each in turn, are to be confusedly ingulphed. Queens, kings, popes and archbishops with their ministers and their crowns lie in heaps, and their souls, in the shape of nude infants, issue from their bodies to take their place in the terri- ble eternity. Some are welcomed by angels, but the greater number are seized by demons, hideous and base figures, with bodies of goats and toads, and with bats' ears and the jaws and claws of cats — a grotesque pack gambolling and capering around their quarry : a singu- lar commingling of dramatic passion, morbid philos- 0]3hy, accurate observation, awkward triviality and picturesque impotence. The fresco next to this, " The Last Judgment," is similar. Many of the faces bear an expression of de- S])air, and of extraordinary stupor, — for instance, an angel in the centre, crouched down, and, his eyes opened wide and rigid with horror, gazing on the eternal judgments ; another, a hairy recluse thrown vio lently backward, with outstretched arms appealing tc 66 PERUGIA iND ASSISI. Christ the mediator, and a condemned woman clinging convulsively to another. All these personages, how ever, are simply figures cut out of paper ; the forms are arranged mechanically, in rows like onions, five stories high, the souls issuing from square holes like trap-doors in a theatre stage ; the art is as inadequate as the sentiment is profound, and, so soon as the senti- ment begins to decline this inadequacy becomes platitude and barbarism. We realize this right alongside in the " Hell" of Ber- nardo Orcagna, which completes the work of his brother Andrea. It is a grave in compartments, arranged so as to frighten little children. In the centre, a huge green Satan of glowing metal with a ram's head is roasting souls in a furnace inside of himself, from which they are seen to issue through the fissures. Around him in a confused medley of flames and serpents, appear naked dolls in the hands of hairy little devils who are flaying, disembowelling and dismembering them, tearing out their tongues and spitting them like chickens, the whole forming a great kitchen stew. — A poetic world from which all poetry is abstracted, a sublime tragedy con- verted into a parade of executioners and a workshop of torture is what this talentless Dante has depicted on these walls. The great era of Christian faith ter- minated with the scandals of the Avignon popes and the convulsions of that schism ; scholasticism dies out and Petrarch ridicules it. A few paroxysms of morbid fervor, — the flagellators of France, the white penitents of Italy, the visions of Saint Catherine and the au- thority of St. Bernard at Sienna, and later the evan- gelical dictatorship of Savonarola at Florence, — indi- cate at most the rare and violent palpitations of a de- parting life. The heretics of Germany and England undermine the church ; the Averrhoeists of Italy un- dermine religion, while, on all sides, the mysticism which had supported religior and ennobled the church ORCAGNA*S FRESCOES. 07 becomes decrepit and falls. Petrarch, the last of the Phitonic worshippers, views his sonnets as amusements, devoting liimseK to reviving antiquity, to discovering manuscripts, and to writing latin versos and prose, and with him we see commencing that long succession of humanists who are about to introduce pagan culture into Italy. Popular Hterature, meanwhile, changes its tone ; practical historians, amusing story-tellers in prose, — the Yillani, the Sacchetti, the Pecoroni and the Boccaccios — substitute merry or ordinary converse for a sublime and \dsionary poesy. The serious declines, for people are disposed to be gay ; Boccaccio's poesy consists of gallant and descriptive novels of adventure, and around him, in France and in England, is displayed in poets and chroniclers, an interminable string of chivalric cavalcades, of princely sumptuousness and of amatory discourses. There is no longer any grand, austere idea to excite the enthusiasm of men. In the midst of the wars and the disastrous dislocations which counter-check or dismantle governments those who look beyond seigneurial pomp and revelry see nothing with which to control man but Fortune, *' a monstrous image with a cruel and terrible face, and a hundred arms, some elevating men to the high places of worldly honor, and others rudely gi'asping them in order to hurl them to the gi'ound ;" alongside of her is blind Death " who grinds all into dust, Idngs and cavaliers, emperors and popes, many lords who live for pleasure and lovely ladies and mistresses of knights who cry aloud and sink in anguish." * These expressions of a contempo- rary seem to describe the fresco of Orcagna. The same impression, indeed, is there found stamped on all hearts ; a bitter sentiment of human instability and misery, an ironical view of passing existence and of worldly pleasure, the liberation of laic opinion freed at * Piers Plowman. 68 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. last from mystic illusion, the intemperance of long- bridled senses in quest of enjoyment — do we find auglii else in Boccaccio ? He places death side by side with voluptuousness, the atrocious details of the plague side by side with the frolics of the alcove. Such is truly the spirit of the time ; and here I imagine we a1 last arrive at the cause which for so long a time re- tarded the progress of painting in Italy. If, during a hundred and fifty years, painting, like literature, re- mained passive after the vigorous advance of its early progress, it is owing to the public mind having re- mained inactive likewise. Mystic sentiment becoming less fervid it was no longer adequately sustained in order to express the pure mystic life. Pagan senti- ment being only in embryo it was not yet far enough advanced to portra^y the broad pagan life. It was abandoning its first road and still remained at the en- trance of the second. It was abandoning ideal faces, innocent or ravished physiognomies, the glorious possessions of incorporeal souls ranged like visions against the splendor of divine light. It descended to the earth, delineating portraits, contemporary costume, interesting scenes, and expressed common or dramatic sentiments. It no longer addressed monks but laymen. These laymen however still had one foot in the clois- ter, and many long years were necessary before their admiration and sympathies, clinging to the super- natural world, could rally in combined force and effort around the natural world. It was necessary that the terrestrial life should gradually ennoble itself in their own eyes even to appearing to them to be the only true and important one. It was necessary that a universal and insensible transformation should in- terest them in the laws and actual proportions of things, in the anatomical structure of the body, in the vitality of naked limbs, in the expansion of animal joyousness and in the triumph of virile energies. Then onl;y IMPRESSIVE MONUMENTS. ^S could tliey compreliend, suggest and demand accurate perspective, substantial modelling, brilliant and melting color, bold and liarijionious form, all parts of complete painting, and that glorification of physical beauty which demands sympathetic spirits in order that it may at- tain to perfection and find its echo. They devoted a century and a half to this great step, and painting, like a shadow accompanying its body, laithfully repeated the uncertainties of their advance in the slowness of its progress. In the middle of the fifteenth century Parro Spinelli and Lorenzo Bicci faithfully copy the grotesque style ; Fra Angelico, nur- tured in the cloister like a rare flower in a conservatory, still succeeds in the purest of mystic visions ; even with his pupil Gozzoli, who has filled up the whole side of a wall hero with his frescoes, we detect, as in the confluence of two ages, the last flow of the christian tide beneath the fulness of the pagan flood. During these two hundred years innumerable paintings are produced to clothe the nudity of churches and monasteries ; this period having elapsed they are regarded with indif- ference ; they fall ofi^ along with the plaster, the masons scratch them away, they disappear beneath whitewash, the restorers make them over afresh. The remains we now have of them are fi'agments, and only in our day have interest and attention been again directed to them ; antiquarians have dug down to the geological stratum which bore them and we now see in them the remains of an imperfect flora extinguished by the inva- sion of a more vigorous vegetation. — The eyes, again turning upward, rest on the four structures of ancient Pisa, solitary on a spot where the grass grows, and on the paUid lustre of the marbles profiled against the di- vine azure. What ruins, and what a cemeter}^ is history ! What human pulsations of which no other trace is left but a form imprinted on a fragment of stone! What indifference in the smile of tl:e placid 70 PERUGIA AND ASSISI. fiimament, and wliat cruel beauty in tliat luminous ca pola stretched, in turn, like a common funereal dais over the generations that have fallen ! We read similar ideas in books, and, in the pride of youth, we have con- sidered them as rhetoric ; but when man has lived the half of his career, and, turning in upon himself, ho reckons up how many of his ambitions he has subdued^ how much he has wrung out of his hopes, and all the dead that lie buried in his heart, the sternness and magnificence of nature appear to him as one, and the heavy sobbing of inward grief forces him to recognize a higher lamentation, that of the human tragedy which, century after century, has buried so many combatants in one common gTave. He stops, feeling on his head as upon that of those gone before, the hand of inexorable powers, and he comprehends his destiny. This hu- manity, of which he is a member, is figured in the Niobe at Florence. Around her, her sons and her daughters, all those she loves, fall incessantly under the arrows of invisible archers. One of them is cast down on his back and his breast, transpierced, is throbbing ; another, still living, stretches his powerless hands up to the celestial murderers ; the youngest con- ceals his head under his mother's robe. She, mean- while, stern and fixed stands hopeless, her eyes raised to heaven, contemplating with admiration and horror the dazzling and deadly nimbus, the outstretched armS; the merciless arrows and the implacable serenity of the gods. BOOK 11. FLORENCE CHAPTER I. STREET SCENES.— FLORENTINE CIIARdVCTER. A criY comj)lete in itself, having its own arts and edifices, lively and not too crowded, a capital and not too large, beautiful and gay — such is the first idea of Florence. One wanders along carelessly over the large slabs with which the streets are paved. From the Palazzo Strozzi to the Piazza Santa Trinita there is a humming crowd constantly renewing itself. In hundreds of places we see the constantly recurring signs of an agTeeable and intellectual life : cafes almost briUiant, print-shops, alabaster jpietra dura and mosaic establish- ments, bookstores, an elegant reading-room and a dozen theatres. Of course the ancient city of the fifteenth century still exists and constitutes the body of the city; but it is not mould}^ as at Sienna, con- signed to one corner as at Pisa, befouled as in Rome, en- veloped in mediaeval cobwebs or plastered mth modern life as if with a parasite incrustation. The past is heie reconciled with the present ; the refined vanity of the monarchy is perpetuated by the refined invention of the republic ; the paternal government of the German gi'and-dukes is perpetuated by the pompous government of the Italian grand-dukes. At the close of the last and the beginning of this century Florence formed a little oasis in Italy, and was called III him side by side with a theological and religions sentiment. Do we not already see in this renaissance of the fourteenth century that of the sixteenth ? In order to pass fi'om one to the other, it will suffice for the spirit of the first to become ascendant over the spirit of the second ; at the end of a century we are to see in the adornment of the edifice, in these statues by Donatello, in their baldness so expressive., in the sentiment of the real and natural life displaj^ed among the goldsmiths and sculptors, evidence of the transformation begun under Giotto having been already accomplished. Every step we take we encounter some sign of this persistency or precocity of a latin and classic spirit. Facing the Duomo is the Baptistery, which at first served as a churcli, a sort of octagonal temple sur- mounted by a cupola, built, doubtless, after the model of the Pantheon of Rome, and which, according to the testimony of a contemporary bishop, already in the eighth century projected upward the pompous rotun- dities of its imperial forms. Here, then, in the mosfc barbarous epoch of the middle ages, is a prolon- gation, a renewal, or, at least, an imitation of Horn an architecture. You enter, and find that the decoration is not all gothic : a circle of corinthian columns ol precious marbles with, above these, a circle of smalhn- columns surmounted by loftier arcades, and, on the vault, a legion of saints and angels peopling the entires space, gathering in four rows around a grand, dull, mea- gi^e, melancholy, Byzantine Christ. On these three super- posed stories the three gradual distortions of antique art appear; but, disiorted or intact, it is always an 94 FLOEENCE. tique art. A significant feature, this, throughout the history of Italy : she did not become germanic. In tlie tenth century the degraded Koman still subsisted distinct and intact side by side with the proud Bar- barian, and Bishop Luitprand wrote : " We Lombards, as well as the Saxons, Franks, Lorranians, Bavarians, Suabians and Burgundians, so utterly despise the Koman name that, when in choler, we know not how to insult our enemies more grievously than to. call them Bomans, for, in this name we include whatever is base, whatever is cowardly, whatever is perfidious, the ex- tremes of avarice and luxury, and every vice that can prostitute the dignity of human nature." * In the twelfth century the Germans under Frederick Barbarossa, counting upon finding in the Lombards men of the same race as themselves, were surprised to find them so latinized, "having discarded the asperi- ties of barbarian rudeness and imbibed from sun and atmosphere something of Boman finesse and gentle- ness, preserving the elegance of diction and the ur- banity of antique customs and imitating, even to their cities and the regulation of public affairs, the ability of the ancient Bomans."t Dov/n to the thirteenth cen- tury they continue to speak latin ; St. Anthony of Padua preached in latin ; the people jargoning in in- cipient Italian, always understand the literary language:|: the same as a peasant of Berri or Burgundy whose rustic patois is no obstacle in the way of his com- prehending the purer discourse of his cure. The two great feudal creations, gothic architecture and chivalric poesy, aj)pear among them only at a late hour, and through importation. Dante states that, even in 1313, no Italian had composed a chivalric poem ; those of France were translated, or were read in the Proven(^al * Quoted by Gibbon. f Otho of Freysingen, X Litteraliter and sapienter opposed to maternaliter. GHIBERTI. 95 dialect. The sole gothic monuments of Italy, Assisi and the Duomo of Milan, are constructed by foreign- ers. Fundamentally, and under external or temporary alterations, the local latin structure remains unchanged, and in the sixteenth century the christian and feudal envelope is to drop off of itself in order to allow the reappearance of that noble and sensuous paganism which had never been destroyed. There was no need of waiting until that time. Sculp- ture, which, once before under Nicholas of Pisa, had anticipated painting, again anticipated it in the fifteenth century ; these ver^- doors of the Baptistery enable one to see with what sudden perfection and bril- liancy. Three men then appeared, Biiinelleschi, the architect of the Duomo, Donatello, who decorated the Campanile with statues, and Ghiberti, who cast the two gates of the Baptistery,"^ all three friends and rivals, all three having commenced \\ith the gold- smith's art and a study of the living model, and all three passionately devoted to the antique ; Brunel- lesehi drawing and measuring Roman monuments, Donatello at Rome copying statues and bas-reliefs and Ghiberti importing fi*om Greece torsos, vases and heads which he restored, imitated and worshipped. " It is impossible," said he in speaking of an antique statue, "to express its perfection by words. ... It has in- finite suavities which the eye alone cannot detect ; only the touch of the hand discovers them !" And he alluded sorrowfully to the great persecutions through whi cli under Constantine "the statues and paintings tliai breathe such nobleness and perfect dignity were ovei- thi-own and broken in pieces, besides the severe penal- ties which threatened all who undertook to make nev.' ones, which led to the extinction of art and of the doc- trines that appertain thereto." When one has such a *' The first horu hi 13:7, W'.u ?. ".jrad in 1386, and the third in loS?. »6 FLOEENOE. lively sentiment of classical perfection he is not fai from attaining to it. Toward 1400, at the age ol twenty-three, after a competition from which Brunel- leschi withdraws in his favor, he secures the commission for the execution of the two doors ; under his hands we see a revival of pure Greek beauty, and not merely a vigorous imitation of the actual body as Donatello comprehended it, but an appreciation of ideal and per- fect form. In his bas-reliefs there are numerous fen^ale figures which in the nobleness of their shape and of their head and in the calm simplicity and develop- ment of their attitude, seem to be Athenian master- pieces. They are not too elongated, as with Michael Angelo's successors, or too vigorous as with the three Graces of Raphael. His Eve, just born, bending for- ward and raising her large calm eyes to the Creator, is a primitive nymph, naive and pure, in whom appear balanced instincts in repose and in activity at the same moment. The same dignity and harmony regulates the groupings and arranges the scenes. Processions defile and turn as around a vase ; individuals and crowds are mutually opposed and related as in an an- tique chorus ; the symmetrical forms of ancient archi- tecture dispose around colonnades the grave, manly figures, the falling draperies, the varied, appropriate and moderate attitudes of the beautiful tragedy enacted beneath its porticoes. One of the youthful soldiers seems to be an Alcibiades ; before him marches a Roman consul ; blooming young women of mcom- parable freshness and vigor turn half-round, gazing and extending an arm, one of them like a Juno and an- other an amazon, all arrested at one of those rare mo- ments when the nobleness of physical life attains to its plenitude and perfection without an effort and without reflection. When passion excites the muscles and dis- turbs countenances it is without deforming or dis- torting them ; the Florentine sculptor as formerly tlie GHIBEETI. 8' Grecian poet, does ix)t allow it to pursue its course to the end ; ho subjects it to the law of proportion and subordinates expression to beauty. He does not wish the spectator to be disturbed by a display of crude violence, nor borne away by the thrilling vivacity of impetuous action suddenly arrested. For him art is a harmony which purifies emotion in order to render the sphit healthy. No man, save Eaphael, has more happily found that unique moment of natural, choice inventiveness, the precious moment when a work of art unintentionally becomes a moral work. The " School of Athens" and the Loggia of the Vatican seem to be of the same school as the doors of the Baptister}', and, to complete the resemblance, Ghiberti handles bronze as if he were a painter; in abundance of figures, in the interest of the scenes, in the grandeur of the land- scapes, in the use of perspective, and in the variety and relationship of the several planes which recede and sink down, his sculptures are almost pictures. — But the north wind blows amonast the masses of stones as through a mountain defile, and when one has wielded an opera-glass for half an hour in it he turns away, even fi'om Ghiberti himself, for a cup of poor coffee in a miserable auberge. BOOK III. THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART, CHAPTEE I. THE EARLY PAINTERS.— THE BYZANTINES.— CEMABUE.— GIOTTO.- PIRST EVIDENCES OF THE LAIC, ITALIAN AND PAGAN SPIRIT. - THE SUCCESSORS OF GIOTTO.— ART AT THIS EPOCH REPRE- SENTED IDEAS AND NOT OBJECTS. April 12. — Here are five or six days passed in tlie Academy of the Fine Arts, at the Uffizj, in the convent of St. Mark, at Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella and in the chnrch of the Carmine, Yasari in hand. One may here note every step of Painting ; and it is impor- tant to note them for, otherwise, in this semi-barbarous age, it has little interest. From what low depths has it not arisen ! At the Academy a St. Mary Magdalen, painted by some By- zantine artist, has shapeless feet, wooden hands, pro- jecting ears, and the figure and the pose of a mummy ; her tresses, which fall to her feet, form a hairy robe, appearing at the first glance like that of a bear. The most ancient picture in the Uffizj is a Madonna by Kico of Candia, a figure apparently of gingerbread. These are sign-painters, copyists by the yard, and their sim- plicity is grotesque. The distance between the mechanic and the artist is infinite, like that between night and day ; but between night and day comes the paleness of dawn, and how- ever dim the dawn it is nevertheless daylight. Thus is it with Cimabue, who already belongs to the new order of things, for he invents and expresses ; his CIMABUE. 99 Madonna at the Acatlemj, as yet somewhat lifeless, is not deficient in a certain grave benignity ; two angels below her stand in an attitude of mournful grace and meekness. Of the four old men at the bottom of the picture, two have no necks ; but you recognize in them a certain aspect of seriousness and of grandeur, one ol them appearing to be attentive and surprised. An expression, even when a feeble one, is it not a miracu- lous thing, like the first confused stammerings of a mute on suddenly recovering his speech? We can understand how the Madonna of Santa Maria Novella, whose hands are so meagre and v ho seems so doleful to us, excited " the wonder of all to such a degree that they brought the King of Anjou to the studio, and all the men and w^omen of Florence gathered there in grand festivity with a great concourse of people, and the picture was transported from Cimabue's house to the church with great pomp, and with trumpets and in solemn procession." On whatever side we study his works we find that he anticipates all subsequent inno- vations. He executed, says Yasari, a St. Francis after nature which was a new thing, and opposed to the sys- tem of the Greeks his masters,'^ who onl}^ painted according to tradition. To return to the Hving figure, to discover that in order to imitate the human form it is necessary to contemplate the human form, what could be simpler ? And yet therein lies the gist of all art. This is percej^tible in the Uffizj gaUery, in a small picture representing St. Catherine in her cauldron. The muscles of the torso are indicated and the bosom is quite made out; the three women in long gi'een robes are nobly posed. You remember the grave Madonna in the Louvre, and the grandeur, and spirited action of the angels that surround her. "Cimabue," * This refers to Byzantine painters who were the conventiona! artists of the day. L.cfC. 100 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF AKT. says a commentator on Dante, " was more noble than can be toid, and, witbal, so proud and disdainful, that if any one detected, or lie discovered, a defect in any of bis works, be immediately abandoned it however great its value." We find some traces of this proud spirit in the haughty and calm attitudes of some of bis figures. A soul with a life of its own, a distinct and characteristic personality disclosing itself even in a vague mist, what a novelty ! All art, its principle, its dignity, its recompense, is therein manifested — to reveal and to perpetuate a personality, that of the artist, and of this personality whatever is essential. In every degree, and in every domaio, his business is to say to men, " Behold that which is in me and what I am ; it is for you to contemplate, to appreciate and to appro- priate whatever seems to you good !" The second step, that taken by Giotto, is much greater, and, with due proportion, equal to that which separates Eaphael from Perugino, or da Yinci from Ve- rocchio. Alongside of him, Margheritone, maintaining traditionary practices, designedly executed ugly and sometimes hideous figures ; Giotto attained to the beautiful through the lively, spontaneous invention of a complete, happy and even gay genius of the Italian order. Although born in a mystic century he is not himself mystic, and if he was the friend of Dante he did not resemble him. His, above all, was a varied, fertile, facile and richly creative nature ; at Florence, Assisi, Padua, Rome, Ferrara, Bimini and Avignon are entire chapels and churches, painted by his hand " He labored at so many works that if one were to re- count them all no person would credit it." These fecund and facile genuises are inclined to joyousnesa and are disposed to take life easily. " He was very in- genious," says Yasari, " and very agreeable in con- versation and highly skilled in sayings of wit, the meaning of which is still preserved in this city.'' GIOTTO. i^l Tlios(! reported of him are coarse and obscene, wit, in those dajs conforming to the manners and customa which were those of peasants. Some are even toler- ably religious ; on explaining why, in pictures, St. Joseph has a melancholy air, he might be taken for a contemporary of Pulci. Wo discover in him the laic spirit, sententious and even positive, satiric and inimical to asceticism and hypocrisy. He who painted " The Marriage of St. Francis \ntli Poverty" ridicules and openly rebukes the vaingloriousness and rapacity of the monks. " For the poverty which seems de- liberate and chosen," sa^'s he in his little poem, " ex- perience plainly shows that it is practised or not ac- cording to what is in the pocket. And if it is practised it is not to render it laudable, for there is no discern- ment of the mind in it, nor knowledge, nor courtesy, nor virtue. Certainly it seems to me a great shame, to call that virtue which suppresses good ; and it is evil- doing to prefer a beastly thing to the virtues, which bring salvation to all wise understandings, and which are such that the more they are prized the more de- lectable they are." Here is laic virtue, moral dignity, and the superior culture of the intellect openly pre- ferred to monkish rigors and christian mortijS.cations. Giotto, indeed, is already a thinker among other thinkers, side by side with Guido Cavalcanti and his father, who are reported as epicureans and fortified with arguments against the existence of God, and Cecco d'Ascoli and many others. " Giotto," said his friends, " is a great master in the art of painting ; ho is something more — he is master of seven Hberal arts." Accordingl}- we have only to look at the figures of this Campanile to see that he is thoroughly imbued with philosophy ; that he formed for himself an idea of universal human civilization ; that, in his view, Chris- tianity was only a part of it ; that Chaldea, Greece and Rome could claim the half of it ; that inventors oi 102 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. useful and beautiful arts hold the first rank in it ; thai he considers the life, progress and happiness of man in the broad and liberal spirit of the [Renaissance and oi modern times ; and that a free, ample and complete expansion of the natural faculties is the end to which the rest must be subordinated. As he thought so did he act. " He was very studious," says Yasari, " and always wandered about contemplating new objecta and inquiring of nature, so that he merited to be called the disciple of nature and of no other He painted divers landscapes full of trees and rocks, which was a novelty in his day." He did much more than this, and although his principal works are at Padua and at Assisi, it is easy to estimate here, by the small pictures in the Uffizj, in the Academy and in Santa Croce, the magnitude of the revolution he effected in his art. He seems to have discovered all, the ideal and nature, the nobleness of figures and the lively expression of sentiments. In his "Nativity," at the Academy, he has caught from the life the action of the kneeling shepherd, who, moved by profound respect, dares not approach nearer. In the picture of " Christ and St. Thomas" Jesus raises his arm with the most affection- ate and mournful air. In the " Last Supper" Judas, who is departing abashed, is a poor dwarfed specimen of a miserly Jew ; while elsewhere, amongst the hands and heads and in the attitudes, the draperies show a refinement, order and beauty approaching the breadth and dignity of the antique. " Jesus disputing with the Doctors" seems an adolescent Greek. In the "Visi- tation" the Virgin has a beauty, purity and meditative sentiment, which Eaphael may express better but not feel more truly. The countenance of a magi king, in the softness of the eye and of the contours, is almost that of a woman. One might cite twenty others ; he reveals an entire world to his contemporaries, the actual world and the superior one, and it is easy to SANTA CEOCE. 10^ eompi'ohend their astonishment, admiration and de- light. For the first time they saw what man is and w hat he ought to be. They were not repelled, as we are, by the imperfections and lack of power which the contrast of more complete works sigjudizes to us and had not signalized to them. Thty did not notice ana- tomical deficiencies, the stiff legs and arms and violent attitudes badly expressed ; the apostles awkwardly bending backward in the " Transfiguration," and the thick necks of the " Doctors of the Temple ;" that absence of relief and incompleteness of being which sets before the eyes not a body but the semblance of a body. We realize the defects of imagery only in con- tact with painting ; Eaphael in the time of Giotto would have been, like Giotto, simply an image-maker We went to Santa Croce, and then to Santa Maria Novella, to see the development of this art. Santa Croce is a church of the thirteenth century modernized in the sixteenth, half-go thic and half-classic, austere at first and afterward decorated, which incongruities prevent it from being either beautiful or striking. It is filled with tombs : Galileo, Dante, Michael Angclo, Filicaja, Battista Alberti, Machiavelli, almost all the great Italians, have monuments here, most of them being modern, ostentatious and cold. That of Alfieri , by Canova shows the hand of a sculptor of the Empire, akin to David and Girodet. The only one that makcH any impression on the mind is that of the Countess Zamoiska, a sweet, pale, emaciated face, and a portrait in which the sculptor has dared to be simple and sin- cere. There is no allegory ; truth in itseK is sufficiently impressive. Life is just departed ; we see her on her couch in her invalid's costimie of a cap and a long robe gathered at the neck ; a sheet covers the rest, leaving the forms of the feet to be divined. Such is the slumber of the peaceful dead, extended after the last agony. 104 THE FLOllENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. This is the church in which some small frescoes hy Giotto were lately discovered beneath the plaster, the stories of John the Baptist, St. John the Evangelist and St. Francis. Are they really by him, and has the restorer been faithful ? In any event they belong to the fourteenth century, and are curious. They do not lack diversity ; you see a number of personages kneel- ing, reclining, standing, seated, bent over and in action, in short in all attitudes. The devout simplicity of th(^ middle ages is well expressed and the rendering of sentiments is spirited. Around St. Francis, who has just expired, stand several monks with a cross and sacred banners; one of them, near his face, holds a prayer-book, while others, in order to absorb sanctity, touch the stigmata of his feet and hand, another at the same time, in his monk's zeal, pressing his hand into the wound on his flank. The latter, and the most affecting, with hands clasped and contracted visage is still speaking to him. It is an actual scene in a feudal monastery. Small figures like these, however, are not far removed from missal paintings, displaying but little more than a contour and a few shadows ; everything is reduced to a general grayish tint ; the figure is less a man than an indeterminate phantom of a man. If we pass on to the following generation a fresco by Taddeo Gaddi, his most celebrated pupil, is no better ; the long, neckless heads of the old men are disproportioned. On coming down to the second generation the paintings by Giottino, on the gothic tomb of Bettino dei Bardi, show that art does not advance. His Christ in a red mantle appearing among angels before the armed cavalier who issues kneeling from his tomb, is, for the believer, a striking image, but an image only. Painting, indeed, seems to decline. A " Coronation of the Virgin" by Giotto, this one authentic and intact, displays on a golden background, between delicate ogives, four beau- tiful ideal angels at the feet of a noble and beneficent GIOTTO. 10.') Madoniici. This search for ample and beautiful form, this remote souvenir of healthy antique beauty is pecu- liar to him as to Nicholas of Pisa. His successors have preserved his defects — feet unable to turn round, dislocated arms and bodies scarcely corporeal —without reproducing the images of force, happiness and serenity first descried by him and which he alone had fixed. On entering into the spirit of his contemporaries we find, on the whole, a desire to see the representation not of beings but of ideas." Cloistral mysticism and scholastic philosophy had filled their heads with ab- stract formulas and exalted sentiments : if sacred and sublime truth was indicated to them, that sufiiced ; physical form only partially interests them ; they do not pursue it curiously and passionately for the love of it ; they demand of it only a symbol and a suggestion. Little does it concern them whether a wrist is fractured or a neck badly set on its shoulders ; they are contem- porary with Dante, and contemplate on their knees this coronation of the Virgin, black like a silhouette against the mystic radiance of aureoles and golden backgrounds ; they feel in it the rendition of a celestial vision, the visible embodiment of an intense reverie like those with which the poet filled his Paradise. Their desire is to see, not a gladiator's breast, or the living anatomy of an athlete, but the Church, with its trials, hopes and triumphs ; truth in its group of sciences and the concourse of its discoveries ; scholastic and encyclo- pedic history ; the grand and symmetrical structure of doctrines and experiences which St. Thomas had just provided as a shelter for all active souls and all reflec- tive intellects. Understandings sulolimated by theology and reverie can ncdther desire nor produce other work * The analogy between tliis state of mind and that of irodern Germans accounts for the admiration of these pictures by th» Genuan critics. iOo THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. lu pahitiDg as in poetry they are impelled to it ; they are restricted to it in painting as in poesy, it being only necessary to see the cloister of Santa Maria Novella to realize the limitations and the exigencies oi such preoccupations and such necessity. Taddeo Gaddi here represents philosophy, fourteen women, the seven profane sciences and the seven sacred sciences, all ranged in a straight line, each seated on a richly ornamented gothic chair, and each with the great man at her feet who acts as her interpreter; above them, in a still more delicate and elaborate chair, is St. Thomas the king of all sciences, trampling under foot the three great heretics Arius, Sabellius and Aver- roes, whilst on either side sit the prophets of the old and the apostles of the new Law gravely presiding with their insignia, and to whom, in the circular space around their heads, are angels, symmetrically posed, bringing books, flowers and flames. Subject, composition, ar- chitecture and characters, the entire fresco resembles the sculptured portal of a cathedral. — Quite like this and still more symbolical, is the fresco by Simone Memmi, which, opposite to it, represents the Church. The object here is to figure the entire christian estab- lishment, and allegory is pushed even to the ludicrous. On the flank of Santa Maria di Fiore, which is the Church, the Pope, surrounded by cardinals and digni- taries, regards a community of believers at his feet in the shape of a flock of lambs reposing under the pro- tection of a faithful dominican police. Some, the dogs of the Lord {Domini canes) are strangling heretical wolves. Others, preachers, are exhorting and making converts. The procession turns, and the eye following it upward, beholds the vain joys of the world, frivolous dances, and, after this, repentance and penitence ; farther on the celestial gates guarded by St. Peter into which pass redeemed souls that have become young and innocent like babes ; after these the thronging SIMONE MEMMI. 107 of the Blessed who continue on into heaven in the shape of angels, while the Virgin and the Lamb are surrounded by foui' sjmbohc animals, with the Father on the summit of the beam rallying and drawing to him the triumphant militant crowd ranged in suc- cessive stories from earth to Paradise. — The two pic- tures face each other and form a sort of abridgment of dominican theology. But this is all, and theology id not painting any more than an emblem is a bodily entity. CHAPTEK 11. ilE FIFTEENTH CENTUKY.— TEANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY ANh II>EAS.— PUBLIC PEOSPBRITY AND USEFUL INVENTIONS.— LUXU RIOUS TASTES. -MODERN CONCEPTIONS OP LIFE AND IIAPPINESS.- TIJE HUMANISTS.— THE POETS.— THE CARNIVAL.— A NEW CAREER OPEN TO THE ARTS.— THE GOLDSMITH, THE PROMOTER OP ART.- ART NO LONGER REPRESENTS IDEAS BUT CREATURES.— PERSPEC- TIVE WITH PAOLO UCCELLO. April 12. — The number of painters and the talent oi this school is surprising ; more than a hundred have been enumerated, — Angiolo Gaddi, Giovanni da Milano, Jacopo di Casentino, Buffalmaco, Pietro Laurati, and all those I saw at Sienna ; the Uffizj and the Academy have specimens of it ; — no positive shadows, no grada- tion of tints, no relief, imperfect perspective and anatomy are phases common to all of them. From 1300 to 1400 there is no perceptible progress ; even according to Sacchetti the story-teller, Taddeo Gaddi, one of the best among these painters, regarded art as having degenerated, and as steadily degenerating every day. At all events the noble pursuit of ideal forms declined in order to make room for an interesting imi tation of actual life, and from Giotto to Orcagna, as from Dante to Boccaccio, the spirit fell from heaven to earth. And therefore, thanks to this fall, another art was springing up. " Considering," says Sacchetti, " the present time and the conditions of human exist- ence, so frequently visited with pestilences and sudden deaths, and seeing what great destruction and what vast civil and foreign wars are acclimatized here, and meditating over the many individuals ar d families that have thus sunk into poverty and misery, and with what painful effort they endure the evils thus inflicted upon them, and again representing to myself how many pec- CHANGES IN SOCIETY. 100 pie there are curious iu novel things, and principally of that description of reading which is easy to compre- hendj and particularly where they derive comfort therefrom, so that a little laughter may mingle with their sorrows I, Franco Sacchetti, a Floren- tine, have proposed to mj'self to write these tales." Such, substantially, is the vast change then effected in the public mind ; terrible municipal enmities had pro- duced so much evil as to relax ancient repubhcan energy. After so much destruction repose was neces- sary. To antique sobrietj^ and gravity succeed love of pleasure and the quest of luxury. The belligerent class of great nobles were expelled and the energetic class of artisans crushed. Bourgeois rulers were to rule, and to rule tranquilly. Like the Medicis, their chiefs, they manufacture, trade, bank and make fortunes in order to expend them in intellectual fashion. Wcir no longer fastens its cares upon them, as formerly, vv^ith a bitter and tragic grasp ; they manage it through the paid bands of condoftieri, and these, as cunning traf- fickers, reduce it to cavalcades ; when they slaughter eacli other it is by mistake ; historians cite battles in which three, and sometimes only one soldier remains on the field. Diplomacy takes the place of force, and the mind expands as character weakens. Through this mitigation of war and through the establishment of principalities or of local tyrannies, it seems that Italy, like the great European monarchies, had just attained to its equilibrium. Peace is partially established and the useful arts germinate in all directions upon an improved social soil like a good harvest on a cleared and well-ploughed field. The peasant is no longer a serf of the glebe, but a metayer ; he nominates his own municipal magistrates, possesses arms and a commu- nal treasury ; he lives in enclosed bourgs, the houses of which, built of stone and cement, are large, convenient, and often elegant. Near Florence he erects walls, and ixU THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. near Lucca lie constructs turf terraces in order to favoi cultivation. Lombardy has its irrigations and rotation of crops ; entire districts, now so many deserts around Lombardy and Kome, are still inhabited and richly productive. In the upper class the bourgeois and the noble labor since the chiefs of Florence are hereditaij bankers and commercial interests are not endangered. Marble quarries are worked at Carrara, and foundry fires are lighted in the Maremmes. We find in the cities manufactories of silk, glass, paper, books, flax, wool and hemp ; Italy alone produces as much as all Europe and furnishes to it all its luxuries. Thus dif- fused commerce and industry are not servile occupa- tions tending to narrow or debase the mind. A great merchant is a pacific general, whose mind expands in contact with men and things. Like a military chief- tain he organizes expeditions and enterprises and makes discoveries ; in 1421 twelve young men of the first families set out for Alexandria in order to nego- tiate with the Sultan and found foreign agencies. Like the head of a state he conducts negotiations, enters into diplomacy, speculates on the strength of governments and on the interests of peoples ; the Medicis possess sixteen banking-houses in Europe ; they bind together through their business Russia and Spain, Scotland and Syria ; they possess mines of alum throughout Italy, paying to the Pope for one of them a hundred thousand florins per annum; they entertain at their court representatives of all the powers of Europe and become the councillors and moderators of all Italy, In a small state like Florence, and in a country without a national army like Italy, such an influence becomes ascendant in and through itself ; a control over private fortunes leads to a management of the public funds, and without striking a blow or using violence, a private individual finds himself director of the state. How is he to use his power ? As a Rothschild of MODEKN CIVILIZATION. ill to 'day would us© it ; and here does tlie precocious ecu formity of tliis fifteenth- century civilization with oui own strikingly appear. Consider now adays the pros- perous and intelligent classes of Europe. How do they regard life and order things ? Not according to the miH- tary and heroic standard of ancient cities, or of the Ger- manic tribes ; not according to the mystic and melan- choly standard of the early christians, of believers in the middle ages, or of protestants in the renaissance ; not according to the brutal, dissolute, torpid standard of half-savage races or of the great oriental empires. We are not anxious to become heroes or ascetics, to be op- pressed or degraded. We regard ourselves as humane and cultivated, somewhat epicurean and dilletant. We hold the supreme end of all effort and of human progress to be a state in which foreign or ciYii wars may become rarer and rarer ; in which order may be maintained without disruption or constraint ; wherein steadily increasing comforts may be widel}" extended to each and to all ; where man's intellectual forces may be constantly applied to the amelioration of his condition and to the increase of knowledge ; where, finally, in the midst of civil security, industrial de- velopment, lasting tranquillity and universal harmony, he may see flourish, as in a mild and equable atmos- phere, the broadest spirit of investigation, the inven- tions of a comprehensive and tolerant mind, the deli- cate and superior appreciation of all human and natural objects, pliilosophy, genius, and research in Hterature, science and the arts. Such is the idea which these Florentines, reared like ourselves in contact with pacific and cosmopolitan industrial interests, begin like ourselves to form of happiness and human culture. For they are not simple voluptuaries or vulgar pa- gans ; it is the whole man that they develop in man, the intellect as well as the senses, and the intellect above the senses. Cosmo founded an academy ol 113 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. philosophy, and Lorenzo revived the platonic banquets Landino, his friend, composes dialogues* the characters of which retiring to the convent of the Camaldoli to enjoy the cool atmosphere, discuss many days in order to decide which of the two, an active or a contem- plative life, is superior. Pierro, the son of Lorenzo, institutes a discussion on true friendship in Santa Maria del Fiore, and offers a silver crown as a prize to the victor. We find in the narratives of Politian and Pic de la Mirandola that the princes of commerce and of the state in those days enjoyed speculations of a refined and superior order, lofty and broad ideas, high flights of the intellect soaring in freedom and joy- ousness toward elevated and distant summits. Is there a greater pleasure than conversing thus in an apartment adorned with rare busts, before the recovered manuscripts of ancient wisdom, in choice and rich language, without the restrictions of etiquette or of rank, prompted by a conciliating and generous spirit of investigation ? It is the fete of the intellect ; it is perfect in Lorenzo's palace, and no preconceptions of social reform, or asperities of religious polemics inter- fere as they do later in the eighteenth century, to dis- turb its poetic harmony. Instead of attacking Chris- tianity they interpret it ; their tolerance is that of the contemporaries of Goethe ; Marsile Ficin seems to be a Schleiermacher. Educated by Cosmo he explains to Lorenzo "that between philosophy and religion the closest relationship prevails, that, the heart and the understanding being, according to Plato, the two wings by which man ascends to his celestial home, the priest approaches him through the former, and the philoso- pher through the latter ; that every religion contains something good ; that those alone honor God truly who render him incessant homage through their actions; * Disputationes Camaldulensea 1468. LOEENZO DI MEDICI. 113 their goodness, their veracity, their charity, and in efTorts to attain to a himinous intelligence." Simi- larly to this he asserts with Plato that " the celestial spheres are moved by spirits that turn perpetually, ever seeking each other," and he develops a pagan astronomy beneath a christian sky. Finally, he re- solves the origin of the Word into that universal law by which " each existence generates the seed of its own being within itself before making itself outwardly manifest" and, combining together philosophy, faith and the sciences, he constructs out of these a harmoni- ous edifice in which lay wisdom and revealed dogma complete and purify each other, not only to furnish a retreat and images for the ignorant many, but again to open an aerial pathway and a boundless horizon to the elite of the thoughtful. Out of this leading trait others follow. What they are in quest of is not simply pleasure, but beauty and happiness, that is to say the expansion of noble as well as of natural instincts. These banking magistrates are liberal as well as capable. In thirty-seven years the ancestors of Lorenzo expend six hundred and sixty thousand florins in works of charity and of public utility. Lorenzo himself is a citizen of the antique stamp, almost a Pericles capable of rushing into the arms of his enemy the king of Naples in order to avert, through personal seductions and eloquence, a war which menaces the safety of his country. His private fortune is a sort of public treasury, and his palace a second hotel-de-ville. He entertains the learned, aids them with his purse, makes friends of them, corre- sponds with them, defrays the expenses of editions of their works, purchases manuscripts, statues and medals, patronizes promising young artists, opens to them his gardens, his collections, his house and his table, and with that cordial familiarity and that openness, sincerity and simplicit}' of heart v/hich place the protected on 114 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OP ART. a footing of equality with tlie protector as man to mar. and not as an inferior in relation to a superior. This is the representative man whom his contemporaries all accept as the accomplished man of the century, no longer a Farinata or an Alighieri of ancient Florence, a spirit rigid, exalted and militant to its utmost cajoa city, but a balanced, moderate and cultivated genius, one who, through the genial sway of his serene and benefic(mt intellect, binds up into one sheaf all talents and all beauties. It is a pleasure to see them expand ing around him. On the one hand writers are re- storing and, on the other, constructing. From the time of Petrarch greek and latin manuscripts are sought for, and now they are to be exhumed in the convents of Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France. They are deciphered and restored with the aid of the savants of Constantinople. A decade of Livy or a treatise by Cicero, is a precious gift solicited by princes ; some learned man passes ten years of travel in ransack- ing distant libraries in order to find a lost book of Tacitus, while the sixteen authors rescued from obli- vion by the Poggios are counted as so many titles to immortal fame. A king of Naples and a Duke of Milan select Humanists for their chief councillors, and wherever in contact with this reconquered anti- quity the scholastic rust vanishes. A fine latin style again flourishes almost as pure as in the times of Augus- tus. On passing from the painful hexameters and heavy pretentious epistles of Petrarch to the elegant distich of Pt>iitian or, to the eloquent prose of Valla, one feels himself stirred as if by an almost sensuous de- light. The mouldy and abortive fruits of the middle ages, soured by feudal frosts, or rotted by the close atmosphere of cloisters, suddenly become ripe and of delicious flavor. The fingers and the ear involuntary scan the easy march of poetic dactyls and the ample flow of oratorical periods. Style again becomes noble LOllENZO DI MEDICI. 115 and at the same time clear, and the health, joy and se renitj diffused through antique life re-enters the human mind with the harmonious proportions of language and the measured graces of diction. From refined language they pass to vulgar language, and the Itahan is bom by the side of the latin. In this renewed spring Lorenzo di Medici is the first poet, and in him first appears not only the new style, but the new spirit. If he imitates Petrarch in his sonnets, and perpetuates the sighs of ancient cLiivalric love, he portrays in his pastorals, satkes and verses for private cu-culation, a refined philosophic Hfe, the graceful charms of classic landscape, the deli- cate enjoyments of eye and intellect, whatever he loves and those around him love, his poetry, through an easy rich and simple development, testifying to a sure hand, an adult century and a complete art. Out of this rich harmony rises a joyous strain, that of the epoch, and which indicates the fatal declivity to which they are tending. Lorenzo himself amuses the crowd and composes for it the plan and triumphs of the carnival. " How beautiful is youth !" say the sing- ers in his "Triumph of Bacchus and Ai-iadne." "But youth flies ; let him who seeks happiness be happy to- day, for there is no certainty in the morrow." Here, in the restored paganism, shines out epicurean gaiety, a determination to enjoy at any and all hours, and that instinct for pleasure which a grave philosophy and political sobriety had thus far tempered and restrained. With Pulci, Berni, Bibiena, Ariosto, Bandelli, Ai'etino, and so many others, we soon see the advent of volup- tuous debauchery and open skepticism, and later a cynical unbounded licentiousness. These joyous and rcifined civilizations based on a worship of pleasure and intellectuality — Greece of the fourth century, Provence of the twelfth, and Italy of the sixteenth — were not enduring. Man in these lacks some checks. Aftei IIG THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. sudden outbursts of genius and creativeness lie wan* ders away in the direction of license and egotism ; the degenerate artist and thinker makes room for the sophist and the dilletant. But in this transient brilKancy his beauty was charming, and following ages, less brilliant externally although firmer on their foundations, cannot refrain from sympathetically gazing on the harmonious edifice whose elegance no efi*ort of theirs can reyive and whose finesse condemned it to fragility. It is in this world, again become pagan, that painting revives, and the new tastes she is to gratify show before- hand the road she is to follow ; henceforth she is to decorate the houses of rich merchants who love anti- quity and who desire to live daintily. With the direc- tion the point of departure is already traced ; the gold- smith's art furnishes it ; through the small dimensions of his works the goldsmith is the natural ministrant to private luxury ; he chases arms, plate, bedposts, chim- uey-piers and the ornamentation of buffets. All jewelry and gems issue from his hand, and, like bronze and silver, he works in wood, marble, stucco and precious stones ; there is nothing appertaining to the embellish- ment of domestic life that does not stimulate his talent or develop his art. This art moreover, through its pre- cocious maturity, outran all the others. Nicholas of Pisa, in the middle of the thirteenth centurj^ ah-eady sculptures small figures which, in their gravity, beauty, noble expression and solid structuie, recall a virile anti- quity and announce a virile renaissance. Through a unique privilege sculpture, at its very first stejD, found complete models in the relics of Greece and Rome, and at the same time complete instruments in the founder's furnace and the mason's mallet; whilst painting, poorly guided and poorly provided, had to wait until the slow progress of centuries could free perfect corporeal forms from the disturbed visions of the middle ages, until a revival of geometrical studies could teach perspective THE goldsmith's AIIT. 117 i'«ik1 imtil tlie educated eye and professional exjDeiiments could inlioduce the use of oil and gradations of color. Hence it is, in the new race about to be run, that the elder sister surpassed and instructed the younger. To- ward 1400 Ghiberti, Donatello and Jacopo della Quer- ela are adults, and the works they produce during the twenty following years are either so full of life, so pure, so expressive or so grand that art is not to go beyond it. All are goldsmiths and all issue from a workshop ; Brunelleschi himself, their master, began there ; it is in this shop that is formed the new generation of paint- ers. Paolo Uccello w^orked in it under Ghiberti ; Maz- zolino acquired in it the rejoutation of a skilful polisher and excellent in modelling the folds of drapery. Pollai- olo, the pupil of Ghiberti's father-in-law and then of Ghiberti himself executed a quail on the doors of the Baptistery which " only had to fly." Dello, Verocchio, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Francia, and later Andrea del Sarto, with all the sculptors who make their debut in the goldsmith's art, Lucca della Eobbia, Cellini, Ban- dinelli and — how many more might I name ! Those who did not file bronze felt, nevertheless the ascendancy of the workers in bronze ; Masaccio, the friend of Don- atello, studied under Brunelleschi ; Leonardo da Vinci in the studio of Yerocchio, modelled clay statu- ettes and then draped them with wet linen in order to draw them afterward and imitate their relief. ThrougL such practices and such an education, the hands thus manipulating forms imbibed the sentiment of solid sub- stance and carried this sentiment into painting. Hence- forth the painter feels that a flat image is not a body. It is essential that a figure should have something within it as well as without it, that behind external appearance and superficial color the spectator should feel deptli, ful- ness, flesh, bones, middle distances, backgrounds, firm- ness of posture, actual spaces and exact proportions. He traces his lines, studies his perspective, undi'apes 118 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OP ART. bodies, marks the muscles, feels their joints, lifts them up and dissects them, and at length, master of every process by which superficial color affords the eye the sensation of living substance, he places art on its en- during foundation, the exact and complete imitation of nature as the artist sees nature and as nature is. Nature, indeed, as he sees her and as she is, is henceforth to interest men. Liberated from the celes- tial world and brought back to the natural world, they are no longer to contemplate ideas or symbols but persons and existences. For them actual objects are no longer a simple sign through which flashes mystic thought ; they have a beauty and value of their own, and the age that fixes itself on them no longer leaves them in order to gaze beyond. Thus exalted and enno- bled they merit representation without suppression; their proportions and forms, the minutest details of as- pect and situation assume importance, and the pictur- esque infidelity of the artist would now be as offensive as would have been formerly the theological infidelity of the christian. In this imitation of sensible appearances thfe first point is a knowledge of the dimensions of ob- jects as affected by remoteness ; their size varies to the eye according to distance, and the truth of the whole is the indispensable foundation on which is to be placed the truth of detail. Paolo Uccello, instructed by the mathematician Manetti, promulgates the laws of per- spective and passes his life fanatically developing the results of his invention. Everybody is astonished and delighted at comprehending for the first time through him the veritable outward phases of objects, to see a vanishing ditch, avenue or the furrows of a ploughed field, to measure the distance separating two figures, to feel the foreshortening of a man's body reclining feet foremost, to detect the innumerable and rigorously de- fined changes which the slightest variation of distance imparts to the forms and dimensions of a figure. But NATURE IN ART. lAtf tiG goes further and peoples this nature of which he has re-established the proportions. He conceives an affection for all sorts of linng creatures, and through him we see entering within the circle of human sympa- thy, dogs, cats, bulls, serpents, lions, " ready to bite and full of haughtiness," deer and fawns " expressing velo- city and fear," birds with their plumage, fish with theii scales, all with their own forms and peculiarities, for merly overlooked or despised, but now discovered and reanimated ; they are still distinguishable in his faded frescoes of Santa Maria Novella and j^ublic taste follows him in tlie path he marked out. He paints in the houses of the Medicis stories of animals, in those of the Peruzzi the figures of the four elements, each with an appropriate animal, a mole, a fish, a salamander and a chameleon. Henceforth everybody desires to con- template in his house the living images ol* the human and of the natural world. The cornices of apartments, the wood-work of bedsteads, huge chests for keeping clothing are all painted with " fables from the works of Ovid and other poets or with stories narrated by the greek and latin historians ; and similarly, jousts, hunt- ing parties and tales of love .... fotes, sjoectacles of the day and other like subjects according to each man's taste." They were to be found in the dw^elling of Lo- renzo di Medici and also in the noblest mansions of Florence. " Dello thus painted for Giovanni di Medici the entire garniture of a chamber, and Donatello mod- elled for him tlie gilded stucco of the surrounding frames. The anatomists are coming to spread through the houses, side by side with antique nudities, the excited and muscular nudities of the n(v,v art, all tliose bold and sensual efiSgies that are so obnoxious to the rigorism of Savonarola. Wliat a distance between this social condition and that of the contemporaries of Dante, and how plainly does worldly paganism in life begin with picturesque paganism in art ! CHAPTER III. PORTRAITURE OF ACTUAL FORM ; MODELLING AND ANATOMY WITH ANTONIO POLLAIOLO AND VEROCCHIO.— CREATION OF IDEAL FORM WITH MASACCIO.— ORIGINALITY AND LIMITS OF ART IN THE FIF- TEENTH CENTURY.— FRA FILLPPO LIPPI AND GHIRLANDAIJO.— THE SUR\aVORS BOTTICELLI. What conception of man is now to be developed, and what corporeal type is it which everywhere repeated is going to cover the walls? One there is which is to reign more than half a century and, until the advent of Leonardo da Yinci, Raphael and Michael Angelo, bind together into one sheaf the most diverse talents. T)iis is the actual personage, the contemporary Florentine figure, a body undraped as it is presented in the living model, man exactly reproduced through literal imita- tion and not transformed through ideal conceptions. When actual life is for the first time recognized, and penetrating into its structure, the admirable mechan- ism of its parts is understood, this contemplation suffices and nothing more is desired. There are so many things in a body and in a head ! Each irregu- larity, an elongation of the neck, a contraction of the nose, a peculiar curl of the lip, forms a part of the indi- vidual ; to improve these would be to mutilate him : he would no longer be the same but another ; the re- lationship which exists between this irregularity and the rest is so strong that it could not be dissolved without marring the whole. The personage is a unit and it can only be expressed by di> portrait. Hence the portraits which the frescoes of the time display in lines and in groupings in the churches, and not merely portraits of the face but again portraits of the body- The anatomist-goldsmith Pollaiolo or Yerocchio placeE KNOWLEDGE OF ANATOMY. 121 a nude subject on a table, removes the skin and noteg in his memory the projections of the bones, the expan- sion of the muscles and the interlacing of the tendons, and then with lights and darks, he transfers the model to canvas as he would have transfixed it in bronze b}^ rehefs and depressions. If you were to say to him that this clavicle was too prominent, that tliat section of the skin ridged with muscles resembled a coil of rope, that these gladiators' and centaurs' masks had the re- pulsive ugliness of vulgar features convulsed and dis- torted by orgie and scuffle he would not comprehend you. He would point to some workman, to a passing figure, in the fii'st place to his subject, especially the flayed one, and he would reply, or feel, that to em- bellish life was to falsify hfe. It is just these folds of the features, these dry angles of raised and intersect- ing muscles which interest him ; his modeller's or chaser's thumb buries itself into them and he im- agines the contact ; they harbor the active, accumulated force which is about to concentrate and expend itself in blows ; they cannot be too boldly shown ; in his eyes they constitute the entire man. Luca Signorelli, having lost a beloved son, has the body stripped and minutely draws every muscle in order the better to preserve him in his memory. Nanni Grosso, djdng in a hospital, refused a crucifix oifered to him demanding to have one by Donatello brought to him, declaring that, otherwise, "he would die unredeemed, so dis- pleasing to him were the badly executed works of his art." Anatomical form is so impressed on their minds that the human being in whom they do not feel it seems to them empty and unsubstantial. An omo- plate, a muscle gives them transports of pleasure. *' Know," says Cellini later, "that the five false ribs form around the navel, as the torso bends backward or for- ward, a multitude of reliefs and depressions which are among the principal beauties of the human body .... 122 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AKT. Thou wilt delight in drawing the vertebrse, for they are magnificent .... Thou wilt then draw the bone placed between the two hips ; it is very fine and is called the crupper or sacrum The important point in the art of drawing is to draw well a naked man or a naked woman." This is readily apparent in their works. In the " St. Sebastian" of Pollaiolo the interest of the sub- ject no longer centres on the martyr but on the execu- tioners. With the artist as with them the main thing is to properly transfix the patient. To this end six men leaning forward or bending back, all only two paces off so as not to miss the mark, string or draw their arbaletes, with half-open mouths through excess of attention, their brows frowning as the shot is made, and their legs extended and widened in order to steady their hands ; the painter thought of nothing but of dis- playing bodies and attitudes. His brother Piero, in a similiar way at San Giminiano has put into a " Corona- tion of the Yirgin" four tawny emaciated saints for no other purpose than to display their veins, muscles and tendons. Similarly, again, Yerocchio in his " Baptism of Christ" at the Academy, displays an old dry wrinkled figure of Christ, an angular St. John and a gruff, melancholy angel in striking contrast to the handsome youth, half inclining, which his young pupil Leonardo da Yinci has placed in one corner as if the sign and dawn of a perfect art. Not only the anat- omist, the amateur of the real, the plaster modeller of the naked figure, but again the goldsmith, the chaser of bronze and the cutter of marble are visible in all these figures. As soon as one imagines them cast in metal they appear beautiful. The draperies, in rigid and broken folds, would be suitable in an ornamental statuette. The action too stiff, and the attitude too forced, would be proper in a statue. A small " Hercu- les" by Pollaiolo in the Uffizj, with its muscles strained and swollen from foot to head in order to overpower MASACCIO. 1-ecial L:iO THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. deformity or grimace stamped by habits of late hours or of big dinners ; — what heed can I give to these ? What concerns me and is of consequence is the grand dominant passion, the prochvity and leading intellectual character, and especially whatever is energetic, de- cided, peculiar to action or to thought, to calculation or to resistance. What I desire to see is the grand lines of physical structure as of moral structure. The rest is secondary in life as in painting, and hence it is that this painting although based upon the real attains to the ideal. It copies individuals but only that which is general in them ; it leaves to heads their originality and to bodies their imperfections, but it makes character prominent in the heads and life in the bodies. It abandons the flat and scrupu- lous style in order to enter upon the broad and sim- ple style. Sometimes, indeed, carried away by its impetus, it fully attains to it. Several figures, through their severe grandeur, through the gravity of their countenances, through their vigorous chins seem to be antique consular characters. St. Peter heal- ing the sick with his shadow walks with royal energy like a Eoman accustomed to lead multitudes ; Jesus paying tribute is as noble and calm as one of Raphael's heads, and nothing is more beautiful than these grand compositions of forty personages, all simply draped, all grave and severe^ all in different attitudes, all ranged around the nude infant and St. Paul who raises it up, between two masses of architecture and before a decorated wall, a silent assembly framed upon both flanks by two distinct groups, one of accidental gazers, the other of kneeling men, corresponding to each other and through their graduated harmony add- ing a richer fulness to this ample symphony. Unfortunately they did not maintain themselves on the heights they reached. Artists are still too absorbed by the new discovery and the minute observation of FRA FILIPPO LIPPI. 121 the real to lift their eyes upward. Their hands are not hee. In every art it is necessary to linger long over the true in order to attain to the beautiful. The eye fixing itself on an object, begins by noting details with an excess of precision and fulness ; it is only later, when the inventory is complete, that the mind, master of its wealth, rises higher in order to take or neglect what suits it. The leading master of this epoch is Fra Filippo Lippi, a curious, exact imitator of actual life ; pushing the finish of his works so far that, according to a con- temporary, an ordinary painter might labor five years day and night without succeeding in reproducing one of his pictures; selecting for his figures short and round heads, personages somewhat gross, virgins who are good, simple lasses quite remote from the sublime, and angels resembhng stout and chubby school or choir boys, somewhat vulgar and obstinate. At tlie same time, however, he aims at relief, defines contour, makes the petty details of a vestment wall or halo advance and recede wdth that vigorous and accurate drawing which conveys to the eye the sensation of a corporeal object definitely placed and perfect. Otherwise, he is adapt- ed in morals as well as in talent, to the spirit of the time, — highly popular, gi'catly admired, impetuous, jovial, a favorite of the Medicis and protected by them in his fi-eaks ; he elopes with a nun although a monk ; he jumps fi'om a window in order to find his mistress ; he is " extraordinarily lavish in love matters devoting himself to them unceasingly, never stopping even up to his death," at which his protectors " laugh," declaring that rare geniuses must be pardoned, " because they aro celestial essences and not beasts of burden." Although this imitation in which the Florentine painters delight is too literal, it has, on the whole, a special grace. It is necessary to visit the church of Santa Maria Novella in order to appreciate its charm. There, Ghhiandaijo, the master of Michael Angelo, has '28 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. covered the clioir with his frescoes. They are poorl;^ lighted and awkwardly piled up on top of each other j but toward midday they can be seen. They represent the story of St. John the Baptist and the Virgin, the figures being half the size of life. Through education as well as instinct this painter, like his contemporaries, is a copyist. He sketched people while passing his goldsmith's shop and the resemblance of his figures excited admiration. He regarded " painting as wholly consisting of drawing." Man, to the artists of this epoch, is still only a form ; but he had so just a sen- timent of this form, and of all forms, that on copying the Roman amphitheatres and triumphal arches, he drew them as accurately with the eye as if with a com- pass. Thus prepared one can readily see what speak- ing, striking portraits he put into his frescoes ; there are twenty-one of these, representing persons whose names are known, Christoforo Landini, Ficin, Politian, the bishop of Arezzo, others of women — that of the beautiful Ginevra de' Benci, all belonging to families controlling the patronage of the chapel. The figures are a little commonplace ; several of them are hard and have sharp noses, and are too literal ; they lack grand- eur, the painter keeping near the ground, or only cau- tiously flying above the surface ; it is not the bold flight of Masaccio. Nevertheless he composes groups and architecture, he arranges figures in circular sanctu- aries, he drapes them in a half-Florentine half-Grecian costume which unites or opposes in happy contrasts and graceful harmonies, the antique and the modern ; above all this he is simple and sincere. An attractive mo- ment this, a delicate aurora consisting of that youthful- ness of spirit in which man first recognizes the poesy of reality. At such a time he traces no line that does not express a personal sentiment ; whatever he relates he has experienced ; as yet there is no accepted type which bodies forth in conventional beauty the budding TYPES OF BE.\L LIFE. ISt aspirations of his breast ; the greater his timiclitj' the more vivacious he is, and the forms some -a hat dry on which he leans are the discreet confessions of a new spirit whicli dares neither to escape fi'om nor reserve itself. One might pass hours here in contemplating the figures of the women ; they are the flower of the city in the fifteenth century ; we see them as they lived, each with her original expression and the charmmg irregularity of real life ; all with those half-modera haK-feudal Florentine features so animated and so intelligent. In the "Nativity of the Yirgin" the young girl in a silk skirt, who comes in on a visit, is the plain demure young lady of good condition ; in the " Nativity of St. John" another, standing, is a mcdi- jBval duchess ; near her the servant bringing in fruits, in statuesque drapery, has the impulse, vivacity and force of an antique nymph, the two ages and the two orders of beauty thus meeting and uniting in the sim- plicity of the same true sentiment. A fresh smile rests on their lips ; underneath their serai-immobility, under tliese remains of rigidity which imperfect painting still leaves, one can divine the latent passion of an in- tact spirit and a healthy body. The curiosity and refinement of ulterior ages have not reached them. Thought, with them, slumbers ; they walk or look straight before them with the coolness and placidity of virginal purit}' ; in vain will education with all its animated elegancies rival the divine uncouthness of their gi'avity. This is why I so highly prize the paintings of this age ; none in Florence have I studied more. They are often deficient in skill and are always dull; they lack both actir)n and color. It is the renaissance in its dawn, a dawn gray and somewhat cool, as in the spring when the rosy hue of the clouds begins to tinge a pale crystal sky, and when, like a flaming dart the first ray of sunshine glides over the crests of the furrows 130 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. It lasts even after great genius has arisen above the horizon. Amidst the illuminated campagna one distin- guishes a sort of valley in which the inanimate forms of the ancient style are still perpetuated. Eoselli, Piero di Cosimo, Credi and Botticelli do not desire to leave it ; they retain dry outlines, feeble color, and irregular, ungracious figures — the scrupulous imitation of the real ; their development is on another side, Bot- ticelli especially, through the expression of deep and fervid sentiment, through tenderness and humility, through the intense morbid reverie of his pensive vir- gins, through frail emaciated forms, through the quiv- ering delicacy of his nude Venuses, through the suf- fering and writhing beauty of his precocious and nerv- ous creatures, all soul and all spirit, who portend the infinite but are not sure of living. There is similar merit in all the masters of this period, Mantegna, Pin- turicchio, Francia, Signorelli, and Perugino ; each one invents for himself ; each marks out his own path and follows his own inspiration. Let his path be a narrow one and let him stumble occasionally, it is of little con- sequence ; his steps are his own, his inspiration comes from himself and not from another. Later, painters are to do better, but they will be less original ; they will advance faster, but in a troop ; they will go farther, but in the hands of the great masters. To my eyes disciplined thought is not the equivalent of free thought ; what I penetrate to in a work of art, as in every other work, is the state of the soul that produced it. In setting up a standard, even v/ithout reaching it, one lives more nobly and more manfully than in ac- quiiing one he has not himself created. Henceforward all fealeut is to be mastered by genius, and artists are to become less as art becomes greater. CHAPTER IV. THE CONVENT OF SAN MARCO.— BEATO ANGELICO.-IIIS LIFE ANI WORKS.— PROLONGATION OF MYSTIC SENTIMENT AND ART. April 13. — What commotion and what travail in tliis fifteenth century ! In the midst of this pagan tiiraultu- oiis hive there stands a tranquil convent wherein sweetly and piously dreams a mystic of ancient days, Fra An- gelico da Fiesole. This convent remains almost intact ; two square coui'ts in it expose their files of small columns sur- mounted by arcades, with theii' little old tile roofs. In one of the rooms is a sort of memorial or genealogical tree, bearing the names of the principal monks who have died in the odor of sanctity. Among these is that of Savonarola, and mention is made of his having perished through false accusation. Two cells are still shown which he inhabited. Fra Angelico lived in the convent before him, and paintings by his hand decorate the chapter-hall, the corridors and the gi'ay walls of the cells. He had dwelt a stranger in the world, and maintained amidst fi'esh sensations and curiosities the innocent, ravished life in God which the " Fioretti" describe. He Lived in a state of primitive simplicity and obedience ; it is said of him that " one morning being invited to breakfast by Pope Nicholas Y. his conscience forbade him to eat meat without the permission of his prior, never reflecting that the Pope's authority was supe- rior." He refused the dignities of his order, and con- cerned himself only with prayer and penitence. " Wlien any work was requii'ed of him he would answer witt LU3 THE FLOIiENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. singular goodness of lieart that they must go and asli the prior, and if the prior wished it he would not fail them." He never desired to paint any but the saints, and it is narrated of him that " he never took up his brushes without kneeling in prayer, and never painted a Christ on the cross without his eyes being filled with tears." It was his custom not to retouch or recast an^ of his pictures, but to let them remain as they first left his hand, " believing that they were as they were through the will of God." We can well understand why such a man did not study anatomy or contempo- rary models. His art is primitive like his life. He be- gan with missals and so continued on the walls ; gold, vermilion, bright scarlet, brilliant greens, the illumina- tions of the middle ages display themselves on his can- vases the same as on old parchments. He even some- times applies them to the roofs ; an infantile piety is eager to decorate its saint or idol and render it radiant to excess. When he abandons small figures and com- poses on a grand scale a scene of twenty personages, he falters;"^ his figures are bodiless. Their affecting devotional expression is inadequate to animate them ; they remain hieratic and stiff; all he comprehended was their spirit. That which he paints understand ingly, and which he has everj^where repeated, are visions and the visions of blessed and innocent spirits. " Grant, O most sweet and loving Jesus, that I may rest in Thee above all living creatures, above all health and beauty, all glory and honor all gifts and presents that Thou canst bestow and diffuse, all jo}^ and gladness that the soul can feel and can cherish In my God do I find all things What do I desire more, and wliat greater happiness ? God is my all Tliis sufiiceth for him that understandeth ; and to re- peat it often is sweet to him that loveth When * A Christ and seventeen saint? m the convent of San Marco. FRA ANGEUCO. 1^3 Tliou art present all things yield delight ; but when Thou art al)scnt all is pain. Thou givest a tranquil heart, then Ijiingost perfect peace and joy."* Such adoration as this is never unaccompanied by in- ward images ; with closed eyes they are persistently fol- lowed, and Avithout effort, as in a dream. Like a mother wlio, on finding herself alone, sees floating in memory the features of a beloved son, like a chaste poet who, in midnight silence, imagines and again sees the down- cast eyes of his beloved, so does the heart involuntarily summon up and contemplate the concourse of divine figures. No object disturbs him in this peaceable coji- templation. Around him all actions are prescribed and all objects are colorless ; day after day uniform hours bring before him the same white walls, the same dark lustre of the wainscoting, the same straight folds of cowls and frocks, the same rustling of steps passing to and fro between refectory and chapel. Dehcate, inde- terminate sensations vaguely arise in this monotony, while tender reverie, like a rose sheltered from life's rude blasts, blooms afar fi'om the great highwa}^ clattering with human footsteps. There is displayed to the e3o the magnificence of eternal day, and henceforth every effort of the painter centres on expressmg it. Glitter- ing staircases of jasper and amethyst rise above each other up to the throne on which sit celestial beings. Golden aureoles gleam around their brows ; red, azure and green robes, fringed, bordered and striped with gold, flash like glories. Gold runs in threads over baldachins, accumulates in embroideries on copes, ra- diates like stars on tunics and gleams fi'om tiaras, while topazes, rubies and diamonds sparkle in flaming constel- lations on jewelled diadems.t All is light ; it is the out- * From the " Imitation of .Tcsus Christ." f Sec " The Coronation of IheVirgm" in the Louvre, and the twelve angels around the infant .Jesus in the Ufflzj. lU THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. burst of mystic illumination. Tlirougli this prodigali- ty of gold and azure one tint prevails, that of the sur and of paradise. This is not common daylight ; it is toe brilliant ; it effaces the brightest hues, it envelops forms on all sides.; it weakens and reduces them to mere shadows. In fact the soul is everything ; ponderable matter becomes transfigured ; its relief is no longer per- ceptible, its substance having evaporated ; nothing re- mains but an ethereal form which swims in azure and in splendor. At other times the blessed approach para- dise over luxuriant meadows strewn with red and white flowers, and under beautiful blooming trees ; angels con- duct them, and, hand in hand, they form fraternally a cir- cle ; the burden of the flesh no longer oppresses them ; their heads starred with rays they glide tlirough the air up to the flaming gate from which issues a golden illumination; Christ, aloft, within a triple row of an- gels pressed together like flowers, smiles upon them beneath his aureole. Such are the delights and the radiance that Dante has portrayed. His personages are worthy of their situation. Al- though beautiful and ideal his Christ, even in celestial triumph, is pale, pensive and slightly emaciated ; he is the eternal friend, the somewhat melancholy consoler of the " Imitation," the poetic merciful Lord as the saddened heart imagines him ; he is not the over-heal- thy figure of the renaissance painters. His long curling tresses and blonde beard sweetly surround his features ; sometimes he smiles faintly, while his gravity is never dissociated with affectionate benignity. At the day of judgment he does not curse ; only on the side of the damned his hand falls, while on the right, toward the blessed, toward those whom he loves, his full regards are turned. Near him the Yirgin, kneeling with down- cast eyes, seems to be a young maiden that has just communed. Occasionally her head is too large as is VISIONS. 1^^ common with the inspired ; her shoulders are narrow aiid her hands too small ; the spiritual, inward life, too highly developed, lias reduced the other ; the long blue mantle wrought in gold in which she is wholly envel- oped, scarcely allows it to be supposed that she has a body. No one can imagine before having seen it such immaculate modesty, such virginal candor ; by her side Raphael's virgins are merely simple vigorous peasant girls. And the other figures are of the same order. Every expression is based on two sentiments, the in- nocence of the calm spirit preserved in the cloister, and the rapture of the blessed spirit that sees God. The saints are portraits, but refined and beatified ; ce- lestial transfiguration eliminates from the body as from the soul the ideal portion concealed and transformed by the grossness of terrestrial being. No wrinkles appear on the countenances of the aged ; they bloom afi'esh under the touch of eternal youth. No traces of physical austerity are visible ; the}^ have entered into the realm of pure felicity. The features of the blessed are in repose, we feel that they rest pas- sive suspended in ecstasy ; to move, to disturb a fold of their drapery would endanger some part of the vision ; the}' turn their eyes to the heights above without bend- ing their bodies ; they are wrapt in meditation in order the better to enjoy their beatitude ; they speak like the dis- ciples of the Evangelist, " Lord, it is good for us to be here ; if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles ; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Ehas." A few, the disciples, seem to be juvenile choristers, monas- tic novices imbued with a spirit of veneration, and timid. On seeing the infant Jesus they give way to a movement of infantile sprightliness and then, fearful of having done something wrong, liesitate and draw back. There are no violent or eager emotions in this world ; all is partially veiled or an-ested midway by the tranquillity io6 THE FLOilENTINE SCHOOL OF AUT. or the obedience of tlie cloister. But tlie most charm- ing figures are those of the angels. We see them knee] down in silent rows around thrones or press together in garlands in the azure. The youngest are amiable, candid children, with minds unruffled by a suspicion oi evil ; they do not think much ; each head, in its golden ciicle, smiles and is happy; it will smile forever, and tliis is its entire life. Others with flamboyant wings, like birds of paradise, play on instruments or sing, and their countenances are radiant. One of them, raisiug his trumpet to put it to his lips, stops as if surprised by a resplendent vision. This one with a violincello to his shoulder seems to muse over the exquisite tones of his own instrument. Two others with joined hands seem to be contemplating and adoring. One, quite youthful, with the full figure of a young girl, bends for- ward, as if to listen before striking her cymbal. To the harmony of tones must be added the harmony of col- ors. Tints do not increase or decrease in strength and intermingle as in ordinary painting. Every vestment is of one color, a red alongside of blue, a bright green alongside of a pale purple, an embroidery of gold placed on a dark amaranth, like the simple, sustained strains of an angelic melody. The painter delights in this ; he cannot find colors for his saints pure enough or orna- ments for them of sufficient preciousness. He forgets that his figures are images ; he bestows upon them the f lithful care of a believer, of a worshipper; he embroi- ders their robes as if they were real ; he covers their mantles with filagree as fine as the finest work of the goldsmith ; he paints on their copes small and perfect pictures ; he applies himself to delicately unfolding their beautiful light tresses, to arranging their curls, to llio proper adjustment of the folds of their tunics, to an accurate delineation of the round monastic tonsure; he enters into heaven with them in order to love and to serve them. Fra Angelico is the last of the mystic CELESTIAL TYPES. '^^ flowers. The society that surrounded him and of which he knew nothing, ended in taking an o])posite direction, and, after a short respite of enthusiasm, proceeded to burn his successor, a Dominican like himself and the last of the christians, Savonarola. CKA.PTEE V. VIIK UFFIZJ COLLECTION.— THE TRIBUNE.— ANTIQUES, AND RENAI& SANCE SCULPTURE.— DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GREEK ART AXC THE ART OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.— MICHAEL ANGELO.— THE MEDICI CHAPEL. What can be said of a gallery containing thirteen hundred pictures? For my own part I abstain. Exam- ine catalogues and collections of engravings, or rather come here yourself. The impressions borne away from these grand storehouses are too diverse and too numer- ous to be transmitted by the pen. Observe this, that the Uffizj is a universal depot, a sort of Louvre con- taining paintings of all times and schools, bronzes, statues, sculptures, antique and modern terra-cottas, cabinets of gems, an Etrascan museum, artists' por- traits painted by themselves, twenty-eight thousand original drawings, four thousand cameos and ivories and eighty thousand medals. One resorts to it as to a hbrar}^ ; it is an abridgment and a specimen of every- thing. Add to this that one goes also to other places, to the Palazzo-Yecchio, to the Palazzo Corsini, to the Palazzo Pitti. A mass of notes accumulate, but I can extract nothing from them. It seems to me that I have completed and corrected or modified some former ideas ; but completions, corrections and modifications are not to be transcribed. The simplest thing, therefore, is to leave study there and promenade for pleasure. We ascend the great marble staircase, pass the famous antique boar and enter the long horseshoe corridor filled with busts and tapestried with paintings. Visitors, about ten o'clock in the morning, are few ; the mute custodians roma^"L in their corners ; you seem to be really at home. li THE ITPFIZJ GALLERY. l^C all belongs to you, and what convenient possessions 1 Keepers and majordomos are here to keep things in order, well dusted and intact : it is not even necessary to give orders ; matters go on of themselves without jar or confusion, nobody giving himself the slightest concern ; it is an ideal world such as it ought to be. The light is excellent ; bright gleams from the window fall on some distant white statues, on the rosy torso of a woman which comes out living from the shadowy obscurity. Beyond, as far as the eye can see, marble gods and emperors extend away in files up to the win- dows through which flickers the light ripple of the Arno with the silvery swell of its crests and eddies. You enter into the freedom and sweet repose of ab- stract life ; the will relaxes, the inner tumult subsides ; one feels himself becoming a monk, a modem monk. Here, as formerly in the cloisters, the tender inward spirit, chafed by the necessities of action, insensibly revives in order to commune with beings emancipated from life's obligations. It is so sweet no longer to be ! Not to be is so natural ! And how peaceful the realm of human forms withdrawn from human conflict ! The pure thought which follows them is conscious that its illusion is transient : it participates in their incorporeal serenity, and reverie, lingering in turn over their vo- luptuousness and violence, brings back to it plenitude without satiety. On the left of the corridors open the cabinets of precious things, — the Niobe hall, that of portraits, that of modern bronzes, each with its special group of treas- ures. You feel that you have a right to enter, that gi'eat men are awaiting you. A selection is made amongst them ; you re-enter the Tribune : five antique statues form a circle here, — a slave sharpening his knife ; two interlocked wrestlers whose muscles are strained and expanded ; a charming Apollo of sixteen years whose compact form has all the suppleness of the freshest 140 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. adolescence ; an admirable Eaun instinct witli tlie ani mality of his species, unconsciously joyous and dan- cing with all his might ; and, finally, the " Yenus de Medici," a slender young girl with a small delicate head, not a goddess like her sister of Milo, but a per- fect mortal p.nd the work of some Praxiteles fond of hetairce, at ease in a nude state and free from that some- what mawkish delicacy and bashful coquetry which its copies, and the restored arms with their thin fingers by Bernini, seem to impose on her. She is, perhaps, a copy of that Venus of Cnidus of which Lucian relates an interesting story ; you imagine while looking at her, the youths' kisses pressed on the marble lips, and the exclamations of Charicles who, on seeing it, declared Mars to be the most fortunate of gods. Around the statues, on the eight sides of the wall, hang the mas- terpieces of the leading painters. There is the " Ma- donna of the Goldfinch" by Raphael, pure and candid, like an angel whose soul is a bud not yet in bloom ; his " St. John," nude, a fine youthful form of fourteen, healthy and vigorous, in which the purest paganism lives over again ; and especially a superb head of a crowned female, radiant as a summer noonday, with fixed and earnest gaze, her complexion of that power- ful southern carnation which the emotions do not change, where the blood does not pulsate convulsively and to which passion only adds a warmer glow, a sort of Roman muse in whom will still prevails over intel lect, and whose vivacious energy reveals itself in repose as well as in action."^ In one corner a tall cavalier by Van Dyck, in black and with a broad frill, seems as grandly and gloriously proud in character as in propor- tions, primarily through a well-fed body and next through the undisputed possession of authority and * This picture is called " the Fornaiina." It is not however the Fomarina, and it is not certain that Raphael painted it. Titian's venus. ii^ command. Three steps more and we come to the "Flif>ht into Egypt," l)y Correggio, the Virgin with a cliarming spirited face wholly suffused with inward light in which the ])uri[y, archness, gentleness and wildness of a young girl combine to shed the tenderest jn'ace and imDart the most fascinatino- allurements. Ox O Alongside of this a "Sil)}^" by Guercino, wdth her carefully adjusted coiffure and drapery, is the most spiritual and refined of sentimental poetesses. I pass tweut}^ others in order to reserve the last looli for Titian's two Yeuuses. One, facing the door, re- clines on a red velvet mantle, an ample vigorous torso as powei'ful as one of Rubens' Bacchantes, but firmer — an energetic and A'ulgar figure, a simple, strong unin- tellectual courtezan. She lies extended on her back, caressing a little cupid naked like herself, with the va- cant seriousness and passivity of soul of an animal in repose and expectant. The other, called " Yenus with the Dog," is a patrician's mistress, couched, adorned and ready. 'We recognize a palace of the day, the alcove fitted up and colors tastefully and magnificently contrasted for tlie pleasure of the eye ; in the back- ground are servants arranging clothes ; through a win- dow" a section of blue landscape is visible ; the master is about to arrive. Nowadays we devour pleasure secretly like stolen fi-uit; then it was served up on gold- en salvers and people sat down to it at a table. It is because pleasure was not vile or bestial. This woman holding a bouquet in her hand in this grand columnar saloon has not the vapid smile or the w^anton and n^ali- cious air of an adventuress about to commit a l):id action. The calm of evening enters the palace thiough noble architectural openings. Under the pale gi'een of the curtains lies the figure on a white sheet, slightly flushed with the regular pulsation of life, and devel- oping the harmony of her undulating forms. The head is small and placid ; V^■^ ^^ u\ does not rise above the '^-' THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. corporeal instincts ; hence she can resign herself tc tliem witliont shame, while the poesy of art, luxury and socurity on all sides comes to decorate and embellish them. She is a courtezan, but also a lady ; in those days the former did not efface the latter ; one was as much a title as the other and, probably, in demeanor, affection and intellect one was as good as the other. The celebrated Imperia had her tomb in the church of San Gregorio, at Rome, with this inscription : " Impe- ria, a Eoman courtezan worthy of so gTeat a name, fur- nished an example to men of perfect beauty, lived tv/enty-six years and twelve days, and died in 1511, Auo;ust 25." Two centuries after this President De Brosses, at Venice, on being directed to a certain ad- dress found a lady so noble in her manner, so dignified in her bearing and so refined in her language that he stammered out an apology ; he was about to withdraw, aghast at his mistake, when she smiled and bade him be seated. On passing from the Italian into the Flemish galle- ries one is completely turned around : here are paint- ings executed for merchants content to remain quietly at home eating good dinners and speculating over the profits of their business ; moreover in rainy and muddy countries dress has to be cared for, and by the women more than the men. The mind feels itself contracted on entering the circle of this well-to-do domestic life ; such is the impression of Corinne when from liberal Italy she passes to rigid and dreary Scotland. And yet there is a certain picture, a large landscape by Rem- brandt, which equals and surpasses all ; a dark sky bursting with showers amongst flocks of screaming crows ; beneath, is an infinite stretch of country as des- olate as a cemetery ; on the right a mass of barren rocks of so mournful and lugubrious a tint as to attain to the sublime in effect. So is it with an andante oi Beethoven after an Italian Opera. GREEK REPOSE. 143 Ajyt'il 14. — TJie Uffizj. — A visit to tlie antiques and sculptures of the renaissance. The relationship oi tlie two ages is immediately recognized. Both are equally pagan, that is to say wholly occupied with the present and physical life. Notwithstanding this they are separated by two notable differences ; the antique is more calm, and, on coming down to the best period of Greek sculpture this calmness is extraordinary ; it is that of animal life, almost vegetative ; man lives for the sake of living and desires nothing beyond. Wo find in him, indeed, at the first aspect, an apathetic air, or at least dull, approaching melancholy, in contrast 'with the constant feverishness and profound elabora- tion of modern heads. The renaissance sculptor, on the other hand, imi- tates the real more subtly, and aims more at expression. Contemplate the statues of Yerocchio, of Francavilla, of Bandinelli, of Cellini, and especially those of Dona- tello. His " St. John the Baptist," emaciated by fast- ing, is a skeleton. His "David," so elegant, so well posed, has angular elbows and arms of extreme meagre- ness ; individual character, passionate emotion, par- ticular situation, intense will and originahty peer out strongl}' in their works as in a poi-trait. They appre- ciate animation more than harmony. Hence it is, in sculpture at least, that the only mas- ters who perfectly present the sentiment of beauty are the Greeks. After them all is deviation ; no other art has been able to put the soul of the spectator in so just an equilibrium. This is apparent on strolling an hour through this long gallery. The mind is suddenly tran- quillized ; it seems to have recovered its firmness. Tlie heads of empresses are rapidly passed, almost all spoiled by an overloaded and pretentious coiffure ; a glance is bestowed on the busts of the emperors, interesting to a historian and each of which is the summary of a reign and a character ; but one stops before the statues of M4 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. athletes, of tlie " Discobulus," of the small " Bac* chante," and especially of the gods, " Mercury," " Ve- nus " and the two Apollos. Muscles are obliterated the trunk is prolonged without depressions or projec- tions into the arms and thighs ; there is no ef- fort. How strange this term in our world where one encounters nothing but effort ! The reason is that, since the Greeks, man, in developing himself, has become distorted ; he has become distorted all on one side through the predominance of cerebral activit}^ Nowa- days he desires too much, he aims too high and has too much to do. In those days after a youth had exercised in the gymnasium, when he had learned a few hymns and could read Homer, when he had list- ened to orators in the agora and to philosophers in the portico, his education was finished ; the man was ac- complished and he began life complete. A rich young Englishman of to-day, of good family and calm in blood, who has rowed, boxed and raced a good deal, who pos- sesses healthy and precise ideas, who deliberately lives in the country, is, in these days, the least imperfect imi- tation of the young Athenian ; he often possesses the same unity of feature and the same tranquil regard But this does not last long. He is forced to imbibe toe much knowledge, and too positive knowledge : lan- guages, geography, political economy, Greek verses at Eton, mathematics at Cambridge, newspaper statistics and documents, besides the Bi1 )le and ethics. Our civ- ilization overwhelms us; man staggers under the pres- sure of his ever-increasing task ; the burden of inven- tions and ideas which he easily bore in infancy is nc longer proportioned to his strength. He is obliged tc shut himself up in a little province and become special. One development excludes others ; he must be either laborer or student, politician or philosopher, manufac- turer or man of family and confine himself to one thing at the expense of all the rest ; he would be inadequate THE SrilllT OF iMODERN ART. 145 were he not mutilated. Hence the loss in him of calm- ness, and the loss in art of harmony. The sculptor, however, no longer addresses himself to a religious civic community, but to a crowd of isolated amateurs ; he ceases to act in the capacity of priest and of citizen, and is only a man and an artist. He dwells on the anatomi- cal details that are to arrest connoisseurs, and on the exaggerated expression which is comprehended b}' the ignorant. He is a sort of expert goldsmith desirous of gaining and of retaining public attention. He executes simply a work of art and not a work of national art. The spectator pays him in praise and he pays the spec- tator by pleasing him. Compare the " Mercury" of John of Cologna with the young Greek athlete near him. The former, springing on his toe is a tour deforce which is to do honor to the artist, and prove an attractive spectacle to fix the eyes of visitors. The young Athe- nian, on the contrary, who says nothing, who does noth- ing, who is contented to live, is an effigy of the city, a monument of its Olympic victories, an example for all the youths of its gymnasia ; he is of service to education as the statue of a god is of service to religion. Neither the god nor the athlete need be interesting ; it suf- fices for them to be perfect and tranquil ; they are not objects of luxury, but instruments of public welfare ; they are commemorative objects and not pieces of fur- niture. People respect and profit by them ; they do not use them for their diversion nor as material for criticism. Likewise, again, the marble " David" of Donatello, so proudly erect, draped in so original a manner, so haughtily grave, is not a hero or a legendary saint, but a pure creation of the imagination ; the artist fashions a pagan or a christian according to order and his sole concern is to please people of taste. Consider, at hist, Michael Angelo himself, his " Dead Adonis" with head inchned upon his bent arm, and the " Bacchus" who raises his cup and half opens his mouth as if to drink a H6 THE FLOllENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. health — two admirable figures, so natural and almosi antique. With him, however, as with his contempora- ries, action and interest predominate ; he, no more than I they, contents himself with representing a simple exist- ence calm in its own repose. Through this great trans- formation of human life, thus disjointed and dissevered in its various organs, the ideal model, public sentiment and the artistic spirit have radically changed, and that which henceforth the new art typifies is individual personality, striking peculiarities, uncontrollable pas- sion, diversities of action, instead of the abstract type, of the general form, of harmony and of repose. We follow out this idea and leave the Uffizj to see other statues. We enter the Palazzo-Yecchio. Its court is supported by columns entirely covered with' ornamentation and with small figures, the rich and brilliant invention of the renaissance. In the middle of the court stands a fountain the perfection of ele- gance, (this term always recurs to one in Florence,) and, erect on its top, Yerocchio has placed a charming, animated statue of a child in bronze. You ascend to the great Council-chamber painted by Yasari with large, insipid frescoes ; and around it you see a range of marble statues, the " Adam" and " Eve" of Bandi- nelli, both of them meagre and real ; " Yirtue triumph- ant over Yice," by John of Bologna, a grand, sensual imperious fellow, entirely nude, with a singularly dis- ' torted thigh ; a youthful victor standing over a pris- oner, by Michael Angelo, with an elongated body and a very small head, two traits which his school is to copy literally, and finally exaggerate. The same char- acter reappears everywhere, that of beauty centred in exact imitation or in modifications of expression ; it is, however, a new field on which a whole world may be built. In order to comprehend this it is necessary to visit the church of San Lorenzo, filled with the works of THE MEDICI CHAPEL. 1-17 Douatello, Veroccliio and Michael Angela. The church is by Bninelleschi and the chapel by Michael Angelo, one being a sort of temple with a flat ceiling sustained by Corinthian columns, and the other a square structure surmounted by a cupola, the former being too classic and the latter too cold; — one hesitates before writing these two w^ords ; and yet nothing must be kept back even in the presence of such great names. The two pulpits however, by Donatello, the bronze bas-reliefs which cover the marble, so many natural and impas- sioned little figures, and especially the frieze of niido cherubs playing and running along the cornice, and the charming balcony above the organ so delicately wrought that it seems to be of ivory, with its niches, shells, col- umns, animals and foliage — how graceful and what taste ! And what ornamentalists they were, these re • naissance sculptors ! Thereupon you enter the Medici chapel and contemplate the colossal figures which Michael Angelo has placed on their tombs. Nothhig in modern statuary is equal to them, and the noblest ruitique figures are not superior; the}^ are different, which is all one can say. Phidias executed serene gods and Michael Angelo sufi^ering heroes ; but suffering heroes are equal to serene gods ; it is the same magnanimitj^ here exposed to the miseries of the world, there emancipated from the miseries of the world ; the sea is as grand in tempest as in repose. Every one has seen a drawing or a plaster cast of these statues ; but, unless on this spot, no one has seen their soul. It is essential to have felt, almost through contact with them, the colossal and superhu- man massiveness of these grand elongated forms whose muscles speak to you ; the hopeless nudity of these virgins of which we see only the S[»irit, the grief and the race, without the mind of itself being capable of enter- taining any other sentiment but fear and compassion. Their blood is different from ours ; a fallen Diana, cap- 118 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. tive in the hands of the barbarians of the Taurica, would possess this visage and this form. One of them, half-reclining, awakes and seems to be shaking off a fearful dream. The head is bowed, the brow frowning, the eyes hollow, and the cheeks ema- ciated. How much misery had to be endured in ordei that such a form might feel the burden of life ! Its indestructible beauty has not succumbed, and yet in- \t'ard suffering begins to reveal its corroding imprint. The superb animal vitality, the vivacious energy of the trunk and limbs are intact, but the spirit falters ; she lifts herself painfully on an arm, and beholds the light with regret. How sad to raise the eyelids, and to feel that once more must be borne the burden of a human day! By her side a man, seated, turns half round with a sombre air like one overcome, irritable and expectant. What an effort, and what writhing when the mass of muscles furrowing this torso swells and strains in order to clutch an enemy ! On the other tomb an unfinished captive, his head half disengaged from its stone ma- trix, the arms rigid, the body contorted, raises his shoul- der with a formidable gesture. [ I see there all of Dante's figures, Ugoliuo gnawing the skull of his enemy, the damned half springing from their flaming sepulchres ; but these are not the cursed ; they \a^e grand wounded spirits justly indignant at slavery, j A grand female form extended is sleeping ; an owl in front of it is placed at its feet. This is the sleep of exhaustion, the dull lethargy of an overtaxed being who has sunk down and rests inert. It is called Night, and Michael Angelo has written on the pedestal, " Sleep is sweet, and yet more sweet is it to be of stone while misery and wrong endure. Not to see, not to feel, is my joy. So wake me not ! Ah, speak in whispers !" These lines are not necessary to make the sentiment which guided his hand understood j his statues tell theii ^ MICHAEL A^'GEL0'S FIGURES. 1'^^ own iitoiy. IJis own Florence had just been van- quished ; in vain had lie fortified and defended it \ after a siege of a year Pope Clement had captured it. The last free government was destroyed. Mercenaries broke into the houses killing its best citizens. Four hundred and sixty emigres were condemned to death as outlaws, or read proclamations throughout Italy fixing a price on their heads. They had ransacked Michael Angelo's dwelling in order to seize and carry him away ; had not a friend concealed him he too would have perished. He had passed long days con- fined in this asylum, knowing that death was taking the noblest lives and hovering around his own. If the Pope afterward spared him it was only through family interest, and in order that he might finish the Medici chapeL He shut himself up in it ; he devoted himself to it passionately ; he tried to forget in it, in intellectual strife and in weariness of hand, the ruin of vanquished liberty, the agony of a down-trodden country, the de- feat of outraged justice, the tumult of suppressed re- sentments, of his impotent despair and of his devour- ing humiliations, and it is this indomitable rebellion oi his soul, sternly confronting oppression and servitude, which he has here put into his heroes and his virgins. Above them, the mute Lorenzo, silent and tragic be- neatli his warrior's casque, with his hand on his lip, is about to arise. A king sits in this attitude when, in the midst of his army, he orders the execution of some judicial act like the destruction of a city. Frederic Barbarossa must have appeared thus when he caused Milan to be ploughed up. / Near the door is an admirable Virgin, unfinished, Wpporting her child on her hip ; her tall draped form is of wonderful nobleness ; she leans over and her hol- low flank makes a pecuHar curve followhig the folds of her robe ; her tliin face wears an expression of benev- olent sadness. Like her reclining sisters she is of a 150 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. more suffering and more exalted race tliau the human race ; all are beings disproportioned to things below, braised and tempest-tossed in life's career, encounter- ing at long intervals respites of calm and of sublime reverie. Between his tranqu.il " Pieta" of St. Peter's at Konio and this grandiose Virgin with such a subtle and nieh ancholy spirit, what a distance ! Add to these the " Moses" and the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. How the man has grown and sujffered ! How he has formed and revealed his original conception of life ! This is modern art, wholly personal and manifesting the indi- vidual, the artist himself, in opposition to antique art which is wholly impersonal and unfolding a general idea expresisive of the city. One finds the same differ- ence between Homer and Dante, between Sophocles and Shakespeare ; Art becomes more and more a confession, that of an individual soul, expressing itself and reveal- ing itself fully to a dispersed and indefinite assembly of other souls. Thus was Beethoven, the most mod- ern and grandest of all musicians.— ^he^ppnsequence is that an artist must be a personality , if not, he has nothing to . say^/^ An Italian remarked to me at Sienna ; " Formerly artists painted with the passions they had ; now they paint those they think they have. This is why after having given us men thej now give as phantoms of men." CHAPTER yi. TTIE PITTI PALACE. -THE ^fEDICI MONARCHY.-MANNERS AND CU8 TOMS OF TUE COURT.— PROMENADES AMONG THE PAINTERS.- .\NDREA DEL SARTO AND ERA BARTOLOMEO.— THE SPIRIT AND INFLUENCE OF FLORENCE IN ITALY. I DOUBH if there is a palace in Europe raore monu- mental than the Pitti Palace. I have not seen one that leaves such a simple, grandiose impression. Placed on an eminence its entire outline appears in profile against the clear blue sky, its three distinct stories superposed one above the other like three regular blocks, the narrowest on the top of the broadest. Two terraces project crosswise on the two flanks adding to it another mass. But what is really unique and carries to an extreme the grandiose serenity of the edifice is the vastness of the material of which it is built. It is Qot stone, but fragments of rock and almost sections of mountains. Some blocks, especially those support- ing the terraces, are as long as five men. Scarcely hewn out, rugged and dark, they preserve their original asperity, as would a mountain if torn from its founda- tions, broken into fi'agments and erected on a new site by Cyclopean hands. There is no ornamentation on the fa9ade ; a long l)alustrade simply runs along the top, intersecting the motionless azure. Colossal round arcades support the windows, and each of theii* vertebrae forms a projection with its primitive irregularities, as if the skeleton of an old giant. Inside is a square court like that of the Farnese pal- ace, surrounded by foui* architectural masses as austere and as vast as the exterior. Here also ornament is *53 THE FLOKENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. wanting, and designedly. The entire decoration con- sists of a lining of doric columns upon which, are ionic columns and, over these, corinthian columns. But these piles of round blocks, rising one above another or alternating with square blocks equal, in the force of their massiveness and the sharpness of their angles, the ruggedness and energy of the rest. Stone reigns supreme here ; the eye seeks for nothing beyond vari- ety of reliefs and substantial position ; it seems as if it subsisted in and for itself, as if art and man's will had not intervened and as if there were no room for fancy. On the ground-floor, stout, resistant doric pillars bear arcades forming a promenade ; and each curve, brist- ling with its bosses, seems to be the joint of an antedi- luvian spine. A brown tint like that of a crag corroded by time, renders the huge edifice sombre from top to bottom, extending even to the rude chequered flagging of the court, enclosed within this accumulation of stones. A Florentine trader built this palace in the fifteenth century and thereby ruined himself. Brunelleschi made the plan, and, fortunately, his successors who completed the structure, did not modify its character. If anj^- thing can give an idea of the grandeur, severity and audacity of intellect which the middle ages bequeathed to the free citizens of the renaissance it is the aspect of such a dwelling built by a single individual for his own use, and the contrast of its internal magnificence with its external simplicit}^ The Medicis, become ab- solute princes, bought the palace in the sixteenth cen- tury and decorated it as princes. It contains five hun- dred pictures, all selected among the best, and several are masterpieces. They do not form a musee according to schools or centuries, as in our great modern collec- tions, to serve the purposes of stud}^ or of history and provide documents for a democracy which recognizes science as its guide and instruction as its support ; they decorate the saloons of a royal palace, wherein the TRAITS OF THE MEDICI FAMILY. 1'^^ prince receives liis coniti(3rs and displays his luxurious- iiess by festivities. TJie age of creators is replaced by the age of connoisseurs, and the pomp of golden vest- ments, the gravity of Spanish etiquette, the gallantry of recent sigisbeism the diplomacy of official intercourse and the license and refinements of monarchical habits and tastes display themselves alongside of the noble forms and h\ing flesh of paintings, before golden ara- besques on the walls and a sumptuous array of furniture by which the prince manifests and maintains his rank and figure. Pietro di Cortona, Fedi and Marini, the last of the painters of the decadence, cover the ceilings with allegories in honor of this reigning family. Here is Minerva rescuing Cosmo I. from Yenus and presenting him to Hercules, the type of great works and heroic exploits ; he in fact, put to death or proscribed the leading citizens of Florence, and he it is who said of a refi'actory city that he " would rather depopulate it than lose it." Elsewhere, Glory and Virtue are leading him to Apollo, the patj-ou of arts and letters ; he, in fact, furnished iiingniflcent apartments and pensioned the writers of sonnets. Farther on, Jupiter and the en- tire Olympian group are all astir to receive him ; he, in fact, poisoned his daughter, caused his daughter's lover to be killed and slew his son who had slain a brother ; the second daughter was stabbed by her husband, and the mother died on account of it ; these operations re- commence in the following generation : assassinations and poisonings are hereditary in this family. But the tables of malachite and of pietra dura are so beautiful ! The ivory cabinets, the mosaic furniture, the cups with dragon handles are in such exquisite taste ! ^liat court better enjoys works of art and knows better how to give fetes? What is there more brilliant, what more ingenious than the mythological representations in honor of the mamage of Francis di Medici with the famous Bianco Capello and of Cosmo di Medici with lf>4 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. Mary Magdalen of Austria ?- What retreat could be better for academicians who purify language and com- pose dedications, for poets wbo turn compliments and point concetti? Obsequious politeness flourishes here ^vitll its magniloquence, literary purism with its scru- ples, contemptuous dilettantism witli its refinements, sensuality in satisfied indifierence, while " the most il- lustrious, most accomplished, most perfect gentleman," becomes the cicerone of Europe, explains with a com- placent smile to harharians from the North, t "the vir- tue" of his painters and " the bravery" of his sculptors. There are too many of them, — I have to say the same as at the UfLizj, come and see them. Five or six pictures by Eaphael stand out from the rest : one is that Madonna which the Grand Duke took wdth him on his travels ; she is standing in a red robe and with a long green veil, the simplicity of the color heightening the simplicity of the attitude. A small diaphanous white veil covers the fine blonde hair up to the edge of the brow ; the eyes are lowered and the complexion is of ex- treme purity ; a delicate tint like that of the wild-rose tinges the cheeks and the small mouth is closed ; she has the calmness and innocence of a German virgin. Raphael here is still of the school of Perugino. — An- other picture, " The Madonna della Seggiola" forms a striking contrast to this. She is a beautiful Grecian or Circassian Sultana ; her head is covered with a sort of turban while striped oriental stuffs of bright colors and embroidered with gold wind around her form ; she bends over her child with the beautiful action of a wild animal and her clear eyes, without thought, look you full in the face. Raphael here has become the pagan and only thinks of the beauty of physical being and the embellishment of the human figure. — You recog- * Nozze di Fiorenza, (with engravings.) f Milton's Travels in Italy. RAPHAEL. l'*>5 iiize tliis in the "Yision of Ezekiel," a suiall canvas a foot high but of the grandest character. Jehovah, \vho appears in a whirlwind, is a Jupiter with nude breast, muscuhir arms and a royal bearing, and the angels around him have such chubby bodies as to be almost fat. None of the fury or delirium of the lie- brew seer subsists here ; the angels are joyous, the grouping harmonious and the coloriog healthy and beau- tiful ; this vision which, with the prophet makes the teeth clatter and the flesh creep, with the painter only elevates and fortifies the soul. That which we find with him throughout is perfection in the proportionate."'^ All his 2')ersonages, whether christian or pagan, are in equilibrium and at peace with themselves and with all the world. They appear to dwell in the azure as he himself lived in it, admired from the start, beloved by everybody, exempt from crosses, amorous without phrensy, laboring without restlessness and, in this con- stant serenit}', occupied in obtaining a rounded arm and a doubling thigh for an infant, a small ear and curling tresses for a woman, searching, purifying, dis- covering and beaming as if only attentive to the music within his own breast. On this account he only feebly affects the spirits of those who know no repose. Hence it is that subtle and impassioned painters, those that wield their art with some grand motive, according to a special and dominant instinct, please me more. Portraits, fi'om this point of view, impress me more than all the rest, because they fully bring out peculiari- ties of individual character. One of these, attributed to Leonardo da Yinci, is called " The Nun." A white veil like a wimple, rests on the head ; the breast, bare midway down the bosom, swells superbl}^ passionless above a black velvet robe. The face is colorless, ex- * The original is la ^perfection dans la mesure. The meaning I be lieve is, perfect parts in perfect relationship. — T?\ 156 THE FLORENTINE SCHOOL OF ART. ceptiug the powerful and strange red lips, and the whole physiognomy is calm with a slight expression of dis- quietude. This is not an abstract being, emanating from the painter's brain, but an actual woman who has lived, a sister of Mona Lisa, as complex, as full of ijiward contrasts, and as inexplicable. Is she a nun a princess, or a courtezan ? Perhaps all three at once hke that Virginia de Leyva whose history has just been exhumed. With the deadened pallor of the cloister she has the splendid nudity of the outward world, and the carnation of the lips on the impassible pale face seems like a scarlet flower blooming on a sepulchre. It is a soul, a dangerous, unfathomable soul, slumbering or watchful, within that marble breast. In this domain the Venetians are the greatest mas- ters, and Titian is of the highest rank. Raphael's por- traits (of which there are five here) tell me less ; he gives the essential of the type, simply, soberly and broadly, but, not like the former, the profound moral expression, the mobile physiognomy, the personal originality utterly in- finite, the entire inner nature of a man. Titian has here eight or ten portraits,— Andrea Vesale the anato- mist, Aretino, Luigi Cornaro, Cardinal Hippolyte di Medici in the costume of a Hungarian magnate, all of them full of life, with a look strange, disquieting and uneasy but passive ; — Philip II. of Spain standing in an official costume, \\dth slashed breeches and hose reaching to the middle of the thigh, a wan, cool-blooded being with projecting jaw, seeming to be abortive, dis- proportioned, incomplete, and steeped in birth and eti- quette ; but especially a Venetian patrician whose name is not known, one of the greatest masterpieces I am familiar with. He is about thirty-five years old, in black, pale, and with an intense look. The face is slightly emaciated, the eyes are pale blue, and a deli- cate moustache connects with a thin beard ; he is of a noble race, and of high rank, but his enjoyment of THE CHARMS OF VENETIAN ART. 1^7 life Las been less than that of a common laborer ; accusations, anxieties and the sentiment of danger have wasted and undermined him with secret and in- cessant nsnry. It is an energetic, worn, and meditative brain, used to sudden resolves at critical turns of Hfe, and glows in its surroundings of sombre hues like a lamp gleaming in an atmosphere of death. fSometimes truthfulness is so vivid that the painter, without knowing it, reaches the superlatively comic. Such is the portrait which Veronese has painted of his wife. She is forty-eight years old, double-chinned, has the air of a court dowager and the coijffure of a poodle- dog ; with her black-velvet robe cut low and square on the neck in a framework of lace she looks pompous enough and proud of her charms ; she is a well-pre- served ample figure, well-displayed, majestic and good- natured, her ruddy flesh, perfect contentment and general roundness suggesting a fine turkey ready for the spit. It is hard to leave these Venetians, the deep blue of their landscape, their luminous nudities in warm shad- ows, their rotund shoulders enveloped in palpable atmosphere, quivering flesh blooming like conservatory flowers, the changeable folds of lustrous stuffs, the proud bearing of venerable men in their simarres, the voluptuous elegance of female lineaments, the force of expression of structure and of embrace with which contorted or erect bodies display the opulence of their vigor and the vitality of their blood. A Giorgone por- trays a nymph chased by a satyr, — how can words render the enjoyment of the ejc and the power of tones ? All is bathed in shadow, but the ardent motion- less face, lovely shoulder, and bosom all issue forth like an apparition ; one must see the living flesh emerging from the deep shadow, and the intense splendor of scarlet tones in deep and bright gradation from the blackness of night to the radiance of open da}-. Facing 158 THE FLOEENTINE SCHOOL OF AET. this, a Cleopatra by Guido, pearly gray on a light slaty background, is nothing but a dull phantom, the vanishing form of a sentimental young damsel. — Equally animated as the nymph of Giorgone is the woman en- titled " Titian's mistress," in a blue robe embroidered with gold and slashed with violet velvet. Her auburn tresses of a clear blonde glow amidst light scattered curls ; her lovely hands, of an exquisitely refined flesh tone, are in repose, because her toilet is complete, while her head, that of a gay young girl, happy in her splendid attire, is enlivened by a scarcely perceptible half-malicious smile. She resembles the " Venus with the Dog." If she is the same person, draped here and andraped there, one can comprehend how painter, pa- trician and poet lost themselves in such felicity ; the heart and the senses are all absorbed ; such a woman according to attitude and toilette, combined in herself fifty other women. No soul, indeed, was required ; all that was requisite were joyousness, beauty and adorn- ment. Read in Aretinos' letters the description of his own, and of other households in Venice. But I must stop short. I have done wrong to let my ow^n taste divert me ; I ought to have confined myself to the Florentine painters. Of these there are two, Andrea del Sarto and Fra Bartolomeo, whom we scarcely know at home, and who have reached the summit of their art through their elevation of type, beauty of composition, simplicity of process, harmony of draper- ies and tranquillity of expression. Perhaps in these average, complete geniuses one obtains the most accu- rate and purest idea of the art and of the taste of Florence. There are sixteen large paintings by Andrea del Sarto in the Pitti Palace, others in the Corsini Pal- ace and in the Ufiizj gallery, and frescoes, still finer, in the portico of the Servites. There are five large works by Fra Bartolomeo in the Pitti Palace and especially a colossal " St. Mark, ' less spirited and impetuous but FRA BARTOLOarEO. t-'iO as grave and as graDcl as tlie Prophets of Micliae) Angelo ; others in the Uffizj and, finally, an admh-able "St. Vincent" in the Academj'. This monk is the most religious of the painters who have been complete mas- ters of form ; none have so perfected the alliance be- tween Christian purity and pagan beauty ; this same man designed his Madonnas nude before applying tho color in order to secure a veritable and perfect body beneath the falling drapery ;- and he became a Domin- ican after the death of Savonarola in order to secure salvation ; a strange union of apparently contradictory actions, and which mark a unique moment in history ; that in which new paganism and old cliristianit}^ meet- ing without struggle and uniting without distinctiveness, permit art to worship sensuous beauty and to exalt physical life, with the smgie condition that it shall only prize nobleness and only portray the serious. With moderate, attenuated and always sober coloring, with a dominant taste for pure drawing, with exquisite propor- tion, balance and finesse of faculties and instincts, the Florentines have shown themselves better adapted than others to fulfil this task. Italian art centred in Florence as formerly Grecian art in Athens. As form- erly in Greece other cities were inadequate or eccentric. As formerly in Greece other developments remained local or temporary, and like the Athens of former days, Florence du-ected or rallied them around herself. As formerly with Athens she maintained her supremacy until the decadence. Through Bronzino, Pontormo, the Allori, Cigoli, Dolci and Pietro da Cortona, through its language and academies, through Galileo and Fili- caja, through its savants and poets and, at length, latnr through the tolerance of its masters and the spirit of" its resurrection, she remained in Italy the capital of the mind * See the collcciion oT t.rii^ir.al drawings in tlie Uffizj. BOOK IV. FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. CHAPTER I. ?EOM FLORENCE TO BOLOGNA— THE APENNINES— BOLOGNA— STEEETSJ AND FIGURES- WOMEN AND THE YOUNG— LOVE— SAN DOMENICO- THE TOMB OP SAN DOMENICO— SAN PETRONIO— JACOPO DELLA QUERCIA -JOHN OF BOLOGNA— END OF THE RENAISSANCE. From Florence to Bologna, April 17. — A more beauti- ful or more fertile country could not be imagined. After leaving Pistoija tlie mountains commence ; from hill to hill, then from crag to crag, the carriage slowly ascends for two hours over a zigzag road, and from the bottom to the top all is cultivated and inhabited. At each turn of the road, we see houses and gardens, terraces of olive-trees, fields sustained by walls, fruit- trees sheltered in the hollows, bits of green meadow and, everywhere, sparkling streams. Women on their knees are washing clothes at the mouths of bubbling foun- tains, or in the little wooden conduits that distribute freshness and moisture to the surrounding declivities. As far as the eye can reach, both valleys and eleva- tions bear the marks of labor and of human prosperity. Everything is turned to account ; chestnut-trees cover, the sharp points and the steep portions of the soil. The mountain is like one enormous terrace of multi- plied grades expressly arranged for diverse species of culture. Even on the summit, in the vicinity of snow, small terraces about six feet wide furnish grazing for the flocks. Signs of this industry and prosperity are as DAKTEAN SCENERY. 101 visible among the inhabitants as upon the soil; the peasantry wear shoes and the women, while tending their flocks or ^\•alking, are braiding straw. The houses are in good condition and the villages are numerous and provided with communal schools and, on the summit oi the Apennines, is a cafe bearing the name of the mouu ' tain range. This is truly the heart of Italy ; in genius, power of invention, prosperity, beauty and salubrity, Florence surpasses Rome, and against foreign invasion this barrier of mountains would be a defence. The other slope forms a second barrier; the Apen- nines with its bastions is as broad as it is high ; on the descent the road winds among little wooded gorges trickling wdth water, all green beneath their ruddy vesture of woods fi-amed in by the sober forms of bare rocks. Night comes on, and the railroad buries itself in the defiles of a new mountain : a fantastic, horrible, devastated landscape like those of Dante : mountains shattered, rocks broken, long subterranean passages wherein the roaring machine plunges as into a vortex, and dismantled valleys no longer anything but a skele- ton ; the torrent rushes almost under the wheels of the carriages and great slides of gravel suddenly appear, whitened in the bright moonlight. In this desert, amidst beds of boulders accumulated during the winter, and in the recesses of a sepulchral gorge is occasionally seen a thorny tree like a spectre in its crypt, and wh'ju the train stops, all that the ear catches is the roar oi the icy water falling over naked stones. Bologna, April 17. — Bologna is a city of arcades ; they extend on both sides of the principal streets. It is quite pleasant to w^alk under them in summer in the shade, and, in winter, protected from the rain. Almost all of the Itahan cities have thus some special contri- vance or construction adding to the conveniences of life and of service to everybody. Only in Italy do people really and univQi-sally comprehend the agree- i^2 FEOM FLOBENCE TO VENICE. able ; for the reason, perhaps, that everybody has need of it and aspires to it. That which strikes one among the young men here, as in [Florence and elsewhere, that which is noticeable in the faces at the theatre, on our promenades and in the streets is a certain amorous air, a gracious smile and tender and expansive ways ; nothing is there ol FreGch hardness or irony. They utter the terms hdlcij veggosa, vaga, leggiadra, with a peculiar accent like that of Don Ottavio in Mozart or of the young tenors of the Italian Opera. On the stage in Florence the tenor kneeling to Marguerite was inconsistent but he per- fectly expressed that state of mind. For the same reason people dress in light colors pleasing to the eye and wear rings and heavy gold chains ; their hair is glossy and there is something blooming and brilliant throughout their persons. As to the women, the bold and dark eye, their deep black hair audaciously knotted or massed in lustrous plaits, the vigorously defined forms of cheek and chin, the brow often square, the large and well-set visage below it and the solid boniness of the skull forestall any appearance of gentleness or delicacy and, gener- ally, even any air of nobleness and purity. To make amends the structure and expression of their features denote energy, brilliancy, gay self-confidence, a posi- tive and clear intellect, and talent and will to turn life to the best account. On looking in the windows of the bookstores at the figures provided by the makers of political caricatures for Italy and its provinces, we re- cognize this very character; although goddesses and allegorical goddesses, their heads are short and round, and grossly gay and sensual. Nothing can be more significant than these popular personages and these recognized types. By way of contrast look at the mild English female of *' Punch," with long curls, and bran- new frocks ; or the Frenchwoman of Marcelin, coquet ITAUAN WOMEN. 16£ tisL, spiiglitlj, antl extravagant, or the candid, honest, primitive German woman, somewhat stupid, of the " Kladderadatsch" and the minor journals of BerHn. I have just strolled through the streets of Bologna ; it is nine o'clock in the morning ; out of four women there are always three of them frizzled and nearly in full dross ; then- keen eye boldly fixes itself on the passers- by ; they go bareheaded, some of them merely letting a black veil hang down over their shoulders ; their Lair swells out superbly on both sides of the head ; they seem to be equipped for conquest ; nobody could im- agine a more naturally triumphant physiognomy, an air more like that of a prima-donna in the clouds. With a character like this, the spirit and the imagina- tion of men, they must control. What can be done at a table-d'hote if not to look about one ? In this forced silence and society the brain and eyes are both busy. The lady facing me is the wife of a major on garrison duty in the Abruzzi, beautiful although mature, gay, prompt, self-confident, and what a tongue ! Northern and Southern Europe, the latin and the germanic races are a thousand leagues apart in this facility of expression, in bold judgment and in promptitude of action. She argues and decides every- thing — the indolence of the Abruzzi peasantry, their vendetfe, the embarrassments of the government, her dog, her husband, the officers of the battalion, " our fine regiment, the 27th." She addresses me and then turns to her neighbor, an ecclesiastic, who, hke the rest, has the same Italian air, that is to say he is gallant and obsequiously polite. Her sentences flow out with the velocity and sonorousness of an inexhaustible torrent. Day before yesterday, another, about forty-eight, in a black spencer puffed with ribbons, and with a red face, entirely absorbed the conversation and made the apart- ment ring with her tattle and exclamations. The other day a pretty little hourgeoise became indisposed in the 164 FEOM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. diligence interieure, and lier liusband had her removec ap to the imperiale by our side. She questioned us aU and corrected my errors of pronunciation ; after having two or three times in succession misplaced an accent or not having caught the precise tone, she became im- patient and gave me a scolding. She informs us that she is just married, that she and her husband hadn't a cent with which to begin housekeeping, etc. ; there are three men alongside of her and she it is who takes and keeps the lead. I have in m}^ mind fifty others, all of whom may be grouped around these three types. The dominant trait is a vivacity and a clearness of concep- tion boldly exploding the moment it is born. Their ideas are all cut out at sharp angles ; she is the Frenchwoman, more vigorous and less fine ; like the latter, and more than the latter, she is self-willed ; she makes of herself a centre ; she does not await direction from another, she takes the initiative. There is noth- ing in her of the mild, the timid, the modest or the re- served, no capacity for burying herself in her house- hold with her children and husband in germanic fashion. I involuntarily compare her with the Eng- lish women who are present. Some there are very peculiar, puritanic at heart, rigid in morality, the fruit of mechanical principles, one especially, in her straw- hat like an extinguisher, a genuine spinster in embryo, without toilet, grace, smile or sex, always silent or, when she speaks, as keen as a knife-blade. She belongs, without doubt, to that species of young lady who is found ascending the White Nile alone with her mother, or clambering up Mount Blanc at four in the morning tied to two guides by a rope, her dress converted into trowsers and striding along over the glaciers. In that country artificial selection has produced sheep espe- cially for meat, and natural selection, women especiallj' for action. But the same force has operated more frequently in another sense; the despotic energy oi ITALLVN ENTHUSUSM. 1^>'' the man, and tlie necessity of a tranquil home to tlie overworked daily laborer have developed in the woman qualities belonging to the ancient germanic stock, namely a capacity for subordination and respect, timorous reserve, aptitudes for domestic life, and the sentiment of duty. She remains, accordingly, the young girl even into matrimony ; on being spoken to she blushes ; if, with all possible precaution and circum- opection, one tries to draw her out of the silence in which she is immured she expresses her sentiments with extreme modesty and immediately relapses. She is immeasurably removed from any aspirations of com- mand, of taking the initiative, of independence even. In all the English couples I have recently met the man is chief ; in every Italian couple it is the woman. And this is not very surprising. People here seem to be lovers naturally and organically. The drivers and conductors of the diligences talk about nothing else. Before a woman, as in the presence of every bcautif-ul or brilliant object, they leap at a single bound to admiration and enthusiasm. qnanto hclla ! Twenty times a day I hear these earnest and emphatic expres- sions. They resemble actors and exaggerating mimics. BellOy hello J hellissimo palazzo ! La chiesa e magnijica, shipenda, tvtti di marmo, tutti di mosaica I Their eyes ensnare and their senses transport them. The more the diverse races are studied the more do aptitudes for enjoyment appear unequal. Some are scarcely moved to pleasure ; others are transported and overcome by it. Enjoyment, with some, resembles the taste of i> Savorless apple ; wdth others the melting and delicious savor of clusters of golden grapes. With some the effect of external objects is an almost uniform series of moderate sensations ; with others it is a tumultuous contrast of extreme emotions. Hence the ordinary current of life is changed ; in everv breast the charm is proportioned to the degree of enjoyment. I mighl 166 FEOM ELOllENCE TO VENICE. give, in this connection, two or tliree stories, and es- pecially one, worthy of Banclello and Pecorone : I was a confidant, and almost an eye-witness, in a small town ; — but such stories are to be told and not WTitten ; the French language allows no expansion of simple nude instinct ; that which is beautiful it pronounces crudity. Here they are more tolerant ; they are ad- dicted to espionage, it is true, as in our provincial towns, but society is content to laugh ; it does not ex- clude lovers, and is not prudish. Bologna, April 17.— The churches are ordinary, in- complete or modernized ; but the sculptures are strik- ing- The most precious are in San Domenico, on the tomb of Saint Dominic decorated in 1231 by the re- storer of art, Nicholas of Pisa. This is the first of the monuments displaying the renaissance of beauty in Italy. Bear in mind that at this period the ascetic spirit through the Dominicans and Franciscans, gained fresh energy ; that gothic art ruled throughout Europe ; that it crossed the Alps and built Assisi. Just at the height of this mystic fever, and on the marble tomb of the first inquisitor, a statuary revives the virile beauty of pagan forms. None of his figures are morbid, ex- alted or emaciated ; on the contrary all are robust, healthy and oftentimes joyous. If they have any de- fect it is excess of vigor. Ordinarily their cheeks are too full, the head too massive and the body, overstout, is too heavy. The grand Virgin in the centre has the satisfied serenity of a good and happy mother of a family ; her hamhino is chubby and is growing finely. A mother, w^hose son has been killed by his horse and who is restored to life, shows the liveliest expression oi joy. Several figures of young girls, and one in par- ticular on the extreme left of the facade, seem to be vigorous, blooming Greek caryatides. The most ascetic personages are transformed in this artist'j^ SAN DOMENICO. 167 hands ; numbers of the bij^" lioudcd niouks' heads are real and humorous ; the dominant traits of all these figures are placidity, solidity and good-humor. This beautiful marble procession thus turns around the panels of the tomb, and the statuettes decorating the capitals, executed by Niccolo dell' Area, two centurie.'^ later, only repeat with a greater degree of skilfulness the same j5rm and free conception ; two youths espe- eiall}', one in a coat of mail and the other booted like the archangels of Perugino, have an admirable spirited attitude. This shrine lacks nothing of the combina- tion in a few square feet of the entii^e development of sculpture. A kneeling angel on the left, noble and serene, and a St. Petronius, grandiose and severe, holding the city in his hand, were cliiselled by Mi- chael Angelo, and from the first to the last matter, all the works are of the same family, pagan, energetic and well proportioned. — If now we promenade through the church we wdll see that in this great period of three centuries the primitive idea did not falter. A tomb of Taddeo Pepoli in 1337, substantial and beautiful, dis- play's no gothic finer}' ; on the two sides two standing saints, tranquil and in large mantles, regard a kneeling figure offering them a small chapel. — Farther on the monument of Alexander Tartegno, in 1477, in an arched niche decked with flowers, fi'uits, animals' heads and small corinthian columns, shows, above the re- cumbent body, three Virtues with full and cheerful countenances in richly carved draper}' and in a studied and expressive attitude. These are the complicated groupings, the minghngs of ideas through which, in the fifteenth century, the renaissance commences ; but, among the various turns of thought, the sculptor has preserved the same race of body imprinted on his memory, and it is always the sentiment of the human fi'amework, the solid muscularity and the natural and nude life which have guided him. 168 FIIOM FLORENCE TO VENICE. This great city is dull and miserable. Several quar ters seem to be deserted ; vagabonds are playing and wrangling in the open spaces. Numbers of stately mansions seem gloomy like the houses of our provin- cial towns. It was, in fact, a provincial city governed by a pope's legate ; from an active republic it was con- verted into a city of the dead. — The best cafe is pointed out to us and we leave it as soon as possible ; it is simply a grog-shop. We stop for a moment be- fore two leaning towers, square and curious, built in the twelfth century, and which have none of the elegance of that of Pisa. We reach the principal church, San Petronio, an ogival basilica with a dome of the Italian gothic and of an inferior species : the mind dwells with regret on the fine monuments of Pisa, of Sienna, and of Florence ; a republican government and a free creative energy did not last long enough here to allow the edifice to be completed. The build- ing is cut in two, and is half -finished ; the interior is whitewashed; three quarters of the windows have been closed up and the facade is incomplete. In the dim light which the too few windows allow to enter there are some good sculptures perceptible ; " Adam and Eve" by Alfonso Lombardi, and an "Annuncia- tion," — but one has not the courage to look at them, as the eye is saddened. We go out, and from the dilapi- dated steps, gaze on a dirty square with its beggars, and a crowd of idle vagabonds. We retrace our steps in order to obtain relief and suddenly get interested. Over the central door is a cordon of superb figures, grand and vigorous nude bodies, pagan in action and in shape, an admirable new-born Eve, another Evo spinning while Adam ploughs, Adam reaching up lo pluck the apple with a gesture of vigorous vitality. They are by Jacopo della Quercia, who executed them in 1425, at the same time that Ghiberti chased the gates of the Baptistery; but Ghiberti anticipated FOUNTAIN BY JOHN OF BOLOGNA. 169 Rapliael, and Querela seems to have been the pre- cursor of Michael Augelo. This is reviviug, and we proceed to a fountain that we discover on the left. Here the renaissance and pa- ganism reach their extreme point. On the summit is a superb Neptune, in bronze, by John of Bologna C1568) and not an antique god, calm and worth}^ of adoration, but a mythological god serving as an orna- ment, naked and displaying his muscles. On the four corners of the basin four children, joyous and well posed, are seizing so many leaping dolphins ; under the feet of the god are four females with fishes' legs dis- playing the magnificent nudity of their bending forms, the open sensuality of their bold heads and closely claspiug their swollen breasts to force out the juttiug water. CHAPTEE II. rHE riNAOOTHECA.— EAPHAEL'S ST. CECILIA.-THE CARACCI.— STATE OF SOCIETY AND OF ART DURING THE CATHOLIC RESTORATION. - DOMENICHINO, ALBANO AND GUIDO. Having once made a tour of the Musee, one immedi- ately feels himself led, re-led to, and arrested before the principal picture, the " Saint Cecilia," by Kaphael. She is standing, surrounded by four personages also standing, and overhead in the sky are angels singing from a music-book ; this is all. The painter evidently does not aim at variety of attitude, nor at dramatic interest ; there is no elaboration or effects of color ; a reddish tone of admirable force and simplicity prevails throughout the painting. All the merit lies in the species and quality of the figures ; color, drapery, ac- tion and the rest are there, like a grave sober accompa- niment, which serves only to secure the solidity of the body and the nobleness of the type. How define this type ? The saint is neither angelic nor ecstatic ; she is a vigorous, healthy, well-developed girl, of rich warm blood, and gilded by the Italian sun- shine with glowing and beautiful color. On her left another young girl, less robust and more youthful, has more innocence, but her purity is yet only passivity. To my mind, however innocent and chaste they ma}' be they are less so through temperament than through their youth ; their placid minds are not yet disturbed, their tranquillity is that of ignorance. And, as with Raphael, we have to go in quest of our comparisons to tlie summit of the ideal, I will say for myself that but two types surpass his, one that of the Greek goddesses, and the other that of certain young girls of the nortL Raphael's st. cecilia. I7i With the same perfection of organization and the same sonl-serenity they yet possess something more, the for- mer the sovereign pride of aristocratic races and the latter the sovereign purity of the spirituaHstic tempera- ment. One readily sees here the exact moment in art which this painting represents. These five standing figures, no more than those of Pcrugino opposite to them, are not allied to each other, and impelled by a common impulse ; each figure exists for itself ; the composition is as simple as possible, almost primitive ; it is an ecclesiastical pic- ture and not a parlor decoration ; it has been commis- sioned by some devout old lady and ministers to piety more than to pleasure. But again the personages are not as stiff as those of Perugino ; their immobility does not interdict action. They are robust, muscular and broadly draped ; beautiful, free, composed, like antique figures. The painter enjoys the unique ad- vantage of standing between a Christianity that is de- clining and a paganism that is becoming triumphant, between Penigino and Juho Komano. In every cycle of development there is one fortunate moment, and one alone ; Raphael benefited by one of these like Phidias, Plato and Sophocles. What a distance between this St. Cecilia and the pic- tures of his master Perugino, and of his fiiend Francia whom he begged to correct his work ! There are six of Francia's near it, — benevolent Madonnas copied from life ; a little less precise and dry than those of Perugino, but always instinct with literal art and the hard hand of the goldsmith. How expanded, noble and free everything becomes in the hands of the youth- ful painter ! And how comprehensible are the admir- ing shouts of Italy ! He has a bad effect upon his successors, the Bolo- gnese, who fill this gallery. On passing from a picture by Eaphael to one of their works it seems like going l'J'3 FEOM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. from a simple writer to a rhetorician. Tliey dm at effects, and are extravagant ; they no longer know how to use language correctly; they force or falsify the sense of terms ; they refine or exaggerate, their ambitious style contrasting with their feeble conceptions and their negligent diction. And yet they are zealous labor- ers, so many restorers of the language. Compared with the Yasaris, Sabbatinis, Passerottis and Procacin- nis, to their predecessors and rivals, to the degenerate disciples of the great masters, they are painstaking and moderate. They are not disposed to paint con- ventionally, according to prescription like some of their contemporaries, who, expeditious artists, gloried in executing figures fifty feet high, in turning out half a mile of painting per diem, painting even with both hands, forgetful of nature and deriving everything from their own genius, heaping together incredible mus- cles, extraordinary foreshortenings, theatrical attitudes on a grand scale and treating all with the indifference of a manufacturer and a charlatan. They stem this tide ; they study the old masters, remain poor and un- employed a long time, and, finally, open a school. Here they labor and neglect nothing in order to become instructed in every department of their art. They copy living heads and draw from the nude model ; casts from the antique, medals and original drawings by the masters supply them with examples. They acquire a knowledge of anatomy from corpses and of mythology from books. They teach architecture and perspec- tive ; they discuss and compare the processes of an- cient and modern masters ; they observe the transfor- mation of features through which a virile trait is con- verted into a feminine trait, an inanimate form into a human form, a tragic attitude into a comic attitude They become learned, even erudite, eclectic and system- atic. They fix principles and devise canons for painters as the Alexandrians formerly did for orators and foi THE CARACCI. ^73 poets. They recommend " tlie drawing of the Komar school, the action and shadows of the Venetians, the beautiful color of Lombard}', the terrible style of Michael Angelo, the truth and naturalness of Titian the pure and masterly taste of Correggio, the dignity and sohdity of Pellegrini the creativeness of the wise Trimaticcio and a little of the grace of Parmegiano.""'*' They lay up stores and exercise themselves. Let us see what finiit this patient culture is going to produce. There are thirteen large pictures here by Ludovico Caracci, and among them, a " Nativity of St. John the Baptist" and a " Transfiguration on Mount Tabor." Few personages can be imagined more declamatory than tlie three figures of the apostles, lialf thrown back- ward and especially the one with a naked shoulder ; they are colossi, too rapidly executed and are without substance or solidity. — His nephew, Augiistino, is a better painter, and his " Communion of St. Jerome" furnished the principal points for a similar picture by Domenichino ; nevertheless, like his uncle he subordi- nates the essential to the accessory, truth to effect, forms and tones to action and expression. — The second nephew, Annibale Caracci, is the cleverest of all. Two of his pictui'es, representing the Virgin in her glory, conform to the sentimental piety of the ago ; his chiaroscuro and the multitude of tints fused into each other cater to the ambiguous emotions of effemi- nate devotion. His St. John designating the Virgin resembles an amoroso ; near him a man kneeling, with a large black beard, expresses his emotion with a com- placent tenderness not exempt from insipidity. The Virgin on her throne, the two saints male and femalo that accompany her, bend over with languishing grace. That beautiful saint herself in a pale violet robe, with parted fingers and plump hands, that Virgin with hei * From a sonnet by Augustine Caracci, 174 FEOM FLORENCE TO VENICE. amiable dreamy air, are lialf-amorous and lialf-mystic ladies. Seek for the sentiment which the art restored by the Caracci serves to manifest, and there it is. In Italy, toward the end of the sixteenth century the character of man becomes transformed. The terrible shocks and infinite ravages of foreign invasion, the ruin of the free republics and the establishment of suspicious tyrannies, the irremediable oppression of a rigorous Spanish rule, the catholic restoration under the Jesuits, the ascendency of bigoted popes and inquisitors, the persecution of free thinkers and the organization of clerical government snapped the spring of the human will ; society relaxes and grows enervated ; people get to be epicurean and hypocritical, and confess themselves and make love. How great the distance between the geniality, light careless fancy and naturally healthy sensuality of Ariosto, and the forced phantasmagoria, the morbid voluptuous derangement, the chivalry and operatic piety found fifty years afterward in Tasso ! And poor Tasso is denounced as impious ! He is com.- pelled to recast his crusade, to prune his love scenes, to exalt his characters, to transform them into allego- ries. Man has become effeminate and perverted ; pow- erful and pure ideas no longer please him, but a medley of refinements, conceits and graduated senti- ments compounded of pleasure and asceticism, alter- nating betwixt the stage and the church, the crucifix and the alcove. The same smile in this epoch rests alike on the lips of saints and of goddesses ; the nudity of christian Madonnas is as attractively displayed as that of pagan Venuses, the cavalier beholding his mis- tress decked, smihng and with open arms on the gild- ing of his chapel as upon that of his own palace. Love itself is transformed ; it is no longer frank and intense ; Baphael's Fornarina to them would seem simply a sound well-conditioned body ; they would prefer in her more affecting and more complex charms SENTIMENTAL ART. 175 more delicate and more intoxicating seductions, a mel- anclioly and mystic sweetness, the vague and winning grace of dreamy abandonment, moistened or ravished eyes inteiTogating space, soft forms melting away in the obscurity of shadows, draperies folded or displayed with studied ingenuity in the languor of artificial light or in the magic of chiaroscuro. They crave affecta- tion and elaboration as their predecessors craved force and simplicity ; on all sides, among the divergencies of the schools, witli Baroche, Cigoli and Dolci, as with the Caracci, Domenichino, Guido, Guercino and Al- bano, w^e see a stj^le of painting appear corresponding to the sugared beauties of the prevailing poesy to the new sigisbeism just introduced and to the opera about to commence. When the soul has become enervated it demands powerful emotions ; over-refinement leads to violence, and the nerves which, habituated to action have lost their stable balance, exact, after the tickling of delicate sensations, the uproar of extreme sentiments. Hence the extravagance of this sentimental art. The faithful have to be revived here by the pale face of a corpse, there by a butchery of martyrs, and there again by gTOSsly coarse figTires in contrast with those of an ex- quisitely celestial type ; and always through the use of excessive gestures, imposing attitudes, a multitude of characters and dramatic effects. In this direction the Bolognese squander their talent and their art. A large work by Domenichino, " Our Lady of the Bosary," unites and masses together four or five tragic episodes aiming to show the efficacy of the sacred rosary : two females in mutual embrace and whom a cavalier tries to pierce with his lance, a soldier attempting to stab a shouting woman, a hermit dying on his straw pallet, a bishop in his cope supplicating Our Lady, all accu- mulated together in one fi-ame ; frightened or weeping figures, melodramatic executioners, pity terror and 176 FEOM FLOKENCE TO VENIOE. curiosity appealed to capriciously and without stint ^ above all this, a sliower of flowers and falling cliaplets, and the Madonna surrounded by frolicsome or tearful angels bearing the crown of thorns with the cross, Saint Yeronica's handkerchief, and other insignia oi mechanical devotion ; and, in the uppermost regions, the little Jesus holding up, as if in triumph, a bouquet of roses. Such is the piety of the day, as I have seen it in Eome in the Jesuits' churches, a grand-orchestra piety, aiming at conquering its public by dint of the pleasing and by excitations.- — His celebrated " Martyr- dom of St. Agnes" is in the same taste. In the fore- ground lies a heap of corpses, the mouth of one opened by his last cry, a horror-stricken woman thrown back- ward with a theatrical air and her infant concealing itself in her robe. The saint meanwhile on her block, pale, her eyes upturned to heaven, stretches out her neck while a lamb, the symbol of her meekness, tries to draw near and lick her feet. Behind her is the execu- tioner with his skull illuminated and his face in shadow all red and brown, the strength of the color and the ferocity of his visage setting off the pallor and gentle- ness of his victim ; he has a narrow hard head and is an excellent executioner, studious to strike his blade home. At the top appears a choir of noisy angels, while Christ bends forward with an interested air to take the crown and the palm-branch which an angel, a genuine domestic, respectfully offers to him. And yet it is full of talent ; this work abounds with richness, truth and expression. Domenichino is a true artist ; he felt, studied, dared and found. Although born in a time when types were prescribed and classified he was original ; he reverted back to observation and dis- covered a hitherto unknown part of human nature. In his " Peter of Yerona" the fright of the saint, hia wrinkled and contracted brow, the crisped hands ex- tended to ward off the blow, the terrified face of the ALBANO AND GUERCINO. 177 other mouk who runs off raising his arms in despair mingled with horror, every attitude and every physiog- nomy in the picture are new creations ; here, for the first time, is the full, hopeless expression of passion ; the terror, even, is so true that both the heads approach the grotesque. Domenichino is never afraid of vul- garity. He sets out from the real, from the object seen ; the contrast between his classic education and his native sincerity, between what he knows and what he feels is certainly a strange one. Almost all the painters of this school are here repre- sented. There are three of the principal works of Albano, all of a religious character, but equally as sen- timental as his pagan pictures. For example, in his " Baptism of Christ" the angels are gallant pages of good birth ; of all the masters he is perhaps the one who l)est expresses the taste of this epoch, affected and uisipid, fond of sentimental nudities and gay mythologi- cal subjects. — Five or six pictures by Guercino with cadaverous tones and powerful effects of shadows, are striking but inferior to those I saw at Rome. Those of Guido, on the contrary, are superior. I was only familiar with his productions in his second manner, almost all of them being gray, pale, formless and without substance, produced quickly and according to prescription, simple agreeable contours of easy, worldly elegance but ^nthout embodying a substantial animated figure He possessed however, a fine genius, and if his character had equalled his talent he would have been qualified to attain to the first rank in his art. Here, in the freshness and vigor of early inspiration he is tragic and grand. He has not yet fallen into a faded, bleached style of coloring ; he feels the dramatic power of tones, and all that strong contrasts and the lugubri- ous mournfulness of mingled dark tints speak to the heart of man. Ai'ound his Christ on the cross and the weeping saints about him the sky is nebulous, almost 1^8 FEOM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. black and overcast with storm-clouds, the personages standing in these vast floating draperies — -St. John in his enormous red mantle, his hands clasped in despair, the Magdalen at the foot of the cross streaming with hair and falling drapery, the Yirgin in her mournful blue robe enveloped in an ashy mantle, — all this sufier- ing choir, forming, through its color and masses, a sort of grandiose, clamorous declamation which ascends up- ward to heaven. Still more grandiose is the tragedy entitled " Our Lady of Pity," and which covers an en- tire panel of the wall. Five colossal figures, the pro- tecting saints of Bologna, in large damascene copes, earthy-hued monks' frocks and warriors' coats, appear together, and behind them, in the distance, you can dis- tinguish the obscure forms of bastions and the towers of the city over which their protection extends. Above them, as if in an upper story of the celestial v/orld, a dead Christ between two weeping angels, displays his livid pallor ; still higher, at the summit of the mystic region, a grand mournful Yirgin enveloped in blue dra- pery, finds in her own grief more profound compassion for human miseries. This is a chapel background, purer and more christian subjects were executed in the times of perfect and primitive piety ; but for the exci- ted piety of subsequent eras, for a catholic and an epi- curean city suddenly swept by pestilence and bowei] down by great anguish there is no painting more appi o- priate or more affecting. CHAPTER III. FROM BOLOGNA TO ILWENNA.— LANDSCAPE.— PEASANTRY.— Tllii TOMB OF THEODOKIC— RAYENNA.-BYZANTLXE AUCIIlTECTTJrvE.-- SAN APOLLINARE AND ITS MOSAICS. April 18. — This countrj seems to be made for tlie de- light of a northern man, for eyes ^\^hich satiated with too distinct forms and wearied with too bright hght, gladly repose on a hazy indefinite horizon covered with a vapory atmosphere. It has rained ; heavy darL- clouds sleep quietly overhead, and, near the horizon, almost drag along the ground. Sometimes, the white back of a cloud exposes its satin lustre in the midst of the pale mist ; an invisible sun warms the banks of vapor, while, here and there, scattered rays peer out like a diamond brooch from soft gray gauze. Toward the east extends an infinite flat plain. Its myriads of trees form in the distance at the edge of the sky a pro- digious spider's web of innumerable thin and mingled threads. Their tops still brown are wedded to the young spring verdure, to willows, budding poplars, and the bright green grain. The earth has imbibed largely ; the water glistens in the furrows, ditches and lagunes, and leag-ue after league, both right and left, the eye always falls on the tilled fields, and interminable rows of elms between which, travelling from trunk to trunk, are interlaced the tortuous stems of the vines. I enter into conversation with an ecclesiastic of the country, and formerly a dnector in a college. The clergy here support the Pope on principle ; but all the homgcoisie, every partially educated person, the largei portion of the nobility, even at Eavenna where aris- tocratic pride runs so high, are for the new ordei of things. ^80 FBOM FLORENCE TO VENICE. My ecclesiastical friend is liberal, strongly comnaenda the schools and army which are the two latest great institutions. According to him " character in this coun- try is naturally very violent ; people resort to the sti- letto instanter ; (Lord B^a-on in his letters calls them superb two-legged tigers.) On receiving an insult they conceal themselves at night and kill the offender. Nothing can be more serviceable to such people than schools ; instruction, reflection and reason are the sole counterpoises to instinct and temperament. As to the army, not only is it a school of obedience and honor but again an ulcerous issue ; nothing could be more pertinent here than the proverb, oziosi, viziosi ; exces- sive ferocity must be utilized against enemies instead of being criminally expended on neighbors ; many en- ergetic men who would have been private malefactors are thus converted into public protectors. The refrac- tory, however, are not numerous ; their numbers dimin- ish annually. In the beginning the unknown, and transplantation frightened them ; since that time the narratives of their comrades have reassured them, and a brilliant uniform begins to entice them. Another wholesome influence is the severity of the tribunals ; assassinations are less frequent since convicts have ceased to be pardoned at the end of six months. The important thing in this country is to bridle the passions which are quite savage and the new regime labors in this direction." It is now clear to me that the promoters and sup- porters of the revolution throughout Italy are the en- lightened and intelligent among the middle and hour- qeois class ; and that the difiicult}?^ lies in winning over an.l civilizinc; or italianizing tbe ]:)eople. Lord Byron in 1820, at Eavenna, already states that the instructed alone are liberal, and that, in the projected insurrection, the peasantry would not rise. The train stops, and, at a quarter of a league from RAVENNA. 181 the city a round low dome appears between tlie green tops of the poplars ; this is the Tomb of Theodoric. Its columns })lunge down into a morass ; its doors are falling, rotted by dampness ; the stones of the rotunda seem to have been knocked away by blows from a hammer. The enormous cupola, one single mass thirty-four feet in diameter, has been riven by light- ning. There is nothing in the interior save one altar and the names of witless travellers and stupid inscrip- tions written in lead-pencil on the diipping walls. The sarcophagus in which the body reposed has been re- moved ; the old king was driven out of his sepulchre at the same time as his Gothic subjects fi'om their domain, and only croaking frogs are heard in the stagnant pool filling the empty crypt. On returning to Ravenna the spectacle is still more melancholy. One cannot imagine a more deserted, more miserably provincial, more fallen city. The streets are deserts ; a few sharp stones serve as a pave- ment ; a foul gutter runs midway through them ; there are no palaces or shops. Two facades of public edifices, well scraped, the Academy and the theatre, are all that stand out in bold relief against this desolation through their cleanliness and commonplace character. You perceive old, rusty and dilapidated towers, the re • mains of ancient structures adapted to new uses, small white columns inserted in one of Tlieodoric's walls and plenty of nooks and corners for the populace. What could poor B}i-on accomphsh here, even with his Count- ess Guiccioli ? Sombre dramas, conspiracies, Byron- ism. The city has been dead for I know not how manj centuries. The sea has receded ; it is the last station of the Eoman empire, a sort of stranded waif which, when Byzantium withdrew, she abandoned on tlie strand. This city, on this rarely-visited, unhealthy coast could not revive in the middle ages like those of Tuscany. Even to-day it is still Byzantine, and more 182 FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. desolate than a ruin because corruption is worse than extinction. A canal leads to the sea, and on its sleepy waters a few boats are seen and four or five sailing-craft. The only beautiful object about the city is a forest of pines which has taken root between it and the brackish waves, and whose distant tops like so many dark circle? form a bar on the line of the horizon. Bavenna.—TiSiYelleTS who have visited the Orient say that Bavenna is more Byzantine than Constanti' nople itself. A city like this is unique ; what can be more strange than this Byzantine world ? We are not sufficiently familiar with it; we have a collection of dull chroniclers and Gibbon, who gives of it a very fair idea ; but the distance is infinite between mere ideas and a complete, colored image. What a spectacle, that of a world in which antique civilization drags along for a thousand years and ends under a perverted Christianity and among oriental importations ! Nothing like it can be found in history ; it is a unique moment of the human soul and culture. We have a good knowledge of the origins, growth and perfection of va- rious peoples, and even of partial declines like those of Italy and Spain ; but a degeneracy so long and compli- cated, a gigantic mouldering away of a thousand years in a closed retort, aggravated by the fermentations of so many and such opposite species, is without example. There are two civilizations, both of them resembling the immense ulcers, swellings and deformities of hu- manity, which I would like to see narrated, not by an antiquary but by an artist, those of Alexandria and Byzantium. Add to these India and China, when the archaeological soil shall have been well ploughed up by the erudites. The first church you encounter, San Apollinare, is a large gable-shaped facade, furnished with a portico that supports arcades resting on columns. The nave still retains the form of the latin basilica with a flal BYZANTINE ART. ^8^1 ceiling, and twenty veined marble columns brought from Constantinople profile their corinthian capitals, already perverted, up to tlie round apsis. The edifice is of the sixth century, but the unchangeable mosaics which on both sides cover the frieze of the nave show as clearly as at the first day what Greek art had got to be in the monastic hands of theological disputants and of the rouged Csesars of the Lower Empire. It is still Greek art. Ten centuries after their death the sculptors of the Parthenon keep their hold on the human mind, and the babbling idiots who now usurp the world's stage ever detect with their blinking eyes, as through a mist, the grand forms and noble drapery whicli once ranged themselves on the pediments of pa- gan temples. Two processions extend above the capi- tals, one of twenty-two saints ending with the Virgin, and the other of twenty-two saints ending with Christ, and in neither of them do the extreme ugliness, the close imitation of ^^ulgar reality as seen in the middle ages, yet appear. On the contrary the figures of the women, regular, rather tall, calm although sad, have an almost antique dignity ; their hair falls in tresses and is gathered at the top of the brow as in the coif- fure of nymphs : their stoles depend in long, grave folds. Equally grave, a file of grand virile figures de- velops itself, and near Christ and the Virgin are angels praying in large white vestments thefr foreheads encir- cled with white bandlets. But here all reminiscences end : the artists know traditionally that a form must be draped, that a certain adjustment of the hair is pi-efer- able and a certain form of the face ; they no longer know what virile form and what young and healthy soul lived beneath these externals. Thej^ have un- learned observation of the living model, the Fathers having interdicted it ; they copy authorized types ; their mechanical hands servilely repeat, copy aftei copy, the contours which their minds no longer compre- ^84 FEOM FjLOEENCE TO VENICE. liend^ and wliicli unskilful imitation is to falsify. From artists they have become mechanics, and in this fall, deeper and deeper every day, they have forgotten the half of their art. They no longer recognize human di- versity; they repeat twenty times in succession, the same costume and action; their virgins can do no more than wear crowns and advance with an air of im- mobility, all in great white stoles, one, especially, in a striped or mottled gold cloth like a Chinese frock, with a large white veil attached to the head and with orange- colored shoes, in short the costume of ancient Greece lengthened in monastic fasliion and embroidered with oriental spangles. They possess no physiognomy ; the features, frequently, are as barbarous as those of a child's drawing. The neck is rigid, the hands wood- eny and the folds of the drapery mechanical. The per- sonages are rather indications of men than men them- selves ; and when the man is got at through the indica- tion the spectacle revealed is still more melancholy, which is the debasement of the model beyond the in- eptitude of the mosaicist and the decadence of man be- yond the decadence of art. There is not, indeed, one of these figures that is not that of a vacant, flattened, sickly idiot. Words are wanting to express their physiognomy, that air of a well-built man and with ancestors of a fine race, now half destroyed, as if dissolved by a system of long fast- mg and paternosters. They have that dull aspect, that species of lax debility and resignation in which the living creature, vainly struck, returns no sound.^ They no longer possess action, will, thought, or spirit ; they are no longer capable of standing up although erect. One would imagine secret vices, so evident is the exhaustion of blood and human vitality. The angels are great simpletons with staring eyes, holloa* * See, in particular, the seventh figure alongside of Christ. BYZANTINE ART. 185 cheeks and that prim and chilled air common to peas- ants who, taken from the fields and transported amid the bickerings, formalities and restraints of theology and the seminary, become bleached and yellow, stupid and abashed. Above the angels several of the saints seem to be emerging from a long fit of nausea or a tedious fever : nobody would believe, before having seen them, that an animated being could become so inert and flabby and lose to such a degree, his physi- cal and moral substance. But that which most inten- sifies the impression is the figure of Christ and of the Virgin. Christ in a brown mantle, with the beard and hair of the ancient gods, is nothing but an impov- erished, belittled god ; his brow, the seat of intelli- gence, is contracted and almost effaced ; his lips are thin, the face attenuated, and his big eyes cavernous. This degradation is unequalled except by that of the Virgin. The panagia has sunk away to an extraordi- nary degree ; nothing is left to her but her eyes ; the nose and mouth are almost gone, while her emaciated hands and fleshless face are those of a dying consump- tive ; she has the action of a manikin, or of a skeleton whose bones and tendons just move, her large violet mantle lotting no sign appear of the contracted body beneath it. CHAPTEK IV. CHARACTER OF THE CIVILIZATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE.— CHAN G5 AND ABASEMENT OF THE SOCIAL AND ARTISTIC SPIRIT.— SAN VITALE, ITS ARCHITECTURE AND MOSAICS.— JUSTINIAN AND THEODORA.— THE TOMB OF PLACIDIA. What kind of macliinery is it which, catching the human sprout in its cogs insensibly expresses all its sap and succulence in order to leave of it simply an empty form and an inert detritus ? First comes the brutal Boman republic, then the onerous imposts of the Roman Caesars, then the still more onerous imposts of the Byzantine Caesars, and a despotism in which all forces capable of depressing man are found combined. —The emperor is a pacha, who may deprive any of his subjects, even a bishop, of life without trial; he may confiscate whatever private property he covets or de- clare himself heir to any fortune he likes ; all dignities, all estates, all lives in this society anxiously hang upon the caprices of his arbitrary will. — The emperor is an inquisitor. Under Justinian twenty thousand Jews are massacred and twenty thousand sold. The Montan- ists are burned along with their churches. The patri- cian Photius, forced to abjure Hellenism stabs himself with a poniard, and in other reigns, we see heretics exiled, despoiled, mutilated or burnt alive. — The em- peror is the head of a faction or sect, at one time orthodox, and at another heretic, now persecuting the "Blues" and now the "Greens," allowing his own party to commit robberies, assassinations and other out- rages on the public highways. — The emperor is a pre- fect over morals and manners. Under Justinian vo- DESPOTISM OF THE EASTERN EMPIRE. 18^ luptuousness is punislied the same as assassination, and parricides, and debauchees are paraded bleeding through the streets of Constantinople. — The emperor is a bureaucrat. His systematic administration, extending downward through all provinces, every- where stifles human enterprise in order to leave on the soil nothing but functionaries and tributaries. — Tlie emperor is a professor of etiquette. A complicated ceremonial prescribes under him a hierarchy of offi- cials who are machines only, and whose actions, like his own, are subordinated to empty forms, the signifi- cance of W'hich is often quite unknown to them.* Every mechanical contrivance which can suppress in man his power of wdll and activity work together con- tinuously and for centuries, the violent ones that crush, and the enfeebling ones that undermine, terror as in oriental monarchies, denunciations as in Imperial Rome, orthodox persecutions as in Spain, legal rigor- ism as in Geneva, the camorra as in Naples, and offi- cial routine and bureaucratic enrollment as in China. Like an axe that fells, like a file that wears, like an acid that corrodes, like a rust that defaces, the various elements of despotism in turn, hack, break, decompose or soften the solid and trenchant steel subjected to their action. This is readily apparent in the language of their writers ; they no longer know how to praise or to blame. Trebonius, associated with Justinian, says that he fears that he will see him disappear, borne ofif by angels because he is too celestial. Procopius thinks that Justinian and Theodora are not human beings but demons and vampires sent to desolate the earth ; after eight books of adulation he at last lets loose his hatred and heaps up furious detractions with the blind awkwardness and mechanical rage of a des- perado who, having escaped torture, stammers, repeats * Codinus Curopalates i88 FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. himself and remains dumb."^ Otliers are courtieis, cav- illers, and scribes, and the nation is the same as its writers. The characters which such a regime multiplies or brings forward consists first of palace domes fiics. em- broidered chamberlains, flaunting mercenaries, the eunuchs,t the intriguers, the extortioners and after these the scribblers, the casuists, the bigots, the pedants and the rhetoricians, and, by their side on the broad stage of society, horse-drivers, buffoons, actresses, loretfces and gandins. Such, indeed, are the conspicuous characters in the play. Old Roman iniquity subsists under the monkish crust which Christianity has formed over it ; the con- demned are still given up to lions in the arena ; the en- tire city takes sides in the chariot-races, and the " Greens" like the " Blues" bear the colors of their dri- vers as badges, and conceal daggers in baskets of fruit in order to assassinate each other at their leisure. As formerly in the Floral Games, women appear naked on the stage ; if new regulations impose a girdle on them, Theodora, the bear-keeper's daughter, and the future empress, takes advantage of the prohibition to invent lascivious refinements under the spectators' eyes. And these are the same people that surrender themselves furiously to theological passions. " Ask a man," says Gregory of Nazianza, " to change a coin for you and he will inform you how the Son differs from the Father. Demand of another the price of bread and he will reply that the Son is inferior to the Father. Try to ascertain if your bath is read^^, and you will be told that the Son is created without substance." They massacre each other on account of these doctrines, and the only point of interest likely to excite a revolt at Constantinople is * Compare in Procopius and in Tacitus a dunce's hatred w'th tha' of a man. f A wealthy widow bequeathed to the Emperor TL eophilus three hundred of these characters. ORIENTAL CORRUrXION. 189 the question of azjmite wafers ov the twofold nature of Jesus Christ. The trwagwn, simple or complete, is sung simultaneously in tlie cathedral by two inimical choirs, and the adversaries fall to belaboring each other with stones and clubs. Justinian passes entire nights with graybeards examining ecclesiastical documents while the monks who swarm in the Ai'chipelago equip a fleet in order to defend images against Leo the Isaurian. These circus amateurs and the young beaux who dress like Huns through a fashionable caprice, these courte- zans worn out with vices, these languid voluptuaries who people the summer palaces of the Bosphorus, all fast, form processions, recite religious symbols and demand persecutions of newly installed emperors.^ " Long live the Emperor ! Long live the Empress ! Unearth the bones of the Manichaeans ! He who will not curse Severus is a Manichsean ! Cast Severus out! Cast out the new Judas ! Put down the enemies of the Trinity ! Unearth the bones of the Eutychians ! Cast the Manichaeans out of the Church ! Cast out the two Stephens !" Incompetent to fight, to rule, to labor or to think they still know how to w^rangle and to enjoy themselves. The sophist and the epicurean live on the remnants of human dissolution ; the play of formulas in vacant minds, and the cravings of the senses in degenerate bodies are the last springs of activity, and the two works to wdiich this civilization tends, both marked with the same imprint, both artificial, vast and void, both formed without taste or reason by the rou- tine of logical or industrial processes are, first, the complicated minute scaffolding of the symbolry and distinctions of theology, and, second, the' glittering composite scaffolding of accumulated wealth and ex- travagant luxury. * Codinus, notes to page 281. Compare the acclamations of tht Senate on the deatli of Commodus, set forth in the histoiy of A u gustus. 190 FROM FLOEENCE TO YENICE. Whoever could have visited Constantinople before its pillage by the Crusaders would have witnessed a strange spectacle.* After passing the enclosure of high crenelated walls and the towers which defended the city like a mediaeval fortress, he would have found an image of ancient Imperial Kome consisting of ranges of two-story porticoes traversing the city in every sense and from one extremity to another, domes v/hose gilded metal glittered in the sunlight, gigantic pillars support- ing colossal equestrian statues, eleven forums, twenty- four baths, so many monuments, palaces, columns and statues that antique civilization, eradicated elsewhere in the world, seems to have collected in this last asylum all its masterpieces and all its treasures. Effigies of victorious athletes brought from Olympus, statues of ancient gods wrested from sanctuaries and figures of emperors multipKed by public adulation, covered the squares and filled the baths and amphitheatres. A bronze Justinian arose on a pillar of seventy cubits high, its base vomiting forth water. A sculptured col- umn within which ran a spiral staircase, bore on its top the equestrian statue of Theodosius in gilded silver. Figures of tortoises, crocodiles and sphinxes placed upon other pillars lifted in the air the emblems of conquered nations. The sombre bronze of colossi, the pallid whiteness of statues gleamed between shafts of porphyry under the variegated marbles of the porticoes, amidst the luminous rotundities of the cupolas, among the long silken robes, embroidered simarres, and the gilded and motley costumes of an innumerable popu- lace. In a marble circus chariots raced around an Egyptian obelisk. Outside, a brazen column around which wound enormous serpents, and farther on, fan- tastic figures of Scylla and Charybdis, the antique boar * Du Cange, " Descriptijn of Constantinople." All authoritiea arc here combined. ANCIENT CONSTANTINOPLE. l^^l of Calydon and various marble and bronze monsters, indicated the fetes where lions, bears, panthers and wild asses let into the arena, amused the people with their yells and combats. There on a throne supported by twenty-four columns the Emperor, on Christmas-day, gave the signal, and men of all nations deHghted the eyes of the crowd with the novelty of their costumes in form and in color. Farther on an amphitheatre afforded the spectacle of criminals abandoned to wild beasts. Toward the east St. Sophia displayed its glittering domes, its hundred columns of jasper and porphyry, its precious marbles veined with rose, striped with green and starred with purple whose saffron, snowy and metallic tints commingled as in Asiatic flowers among balustrades and capitals of gilded bronze before a silver sanctuary facmg a tabernacle of massive gold, near golden vases incrusted with gems and beneath innumerable mosaics decking its walls with lustrous stones and spangles of gold. The dominant characteristics of this church, as throughout the city, were disorderly accumulation and unintelligent wealth. Magnificence was regarded as art and people sought not beauty but bewilderment. Precious materi- als were accumulated and fashioned into barbarous capitals. Greek models whose simplicity they could not comprehend were abandoned for oriental prodigali- ty the display of which could be imitated. The em- peror Theophilus had the palace of the Caliphs of Bagdad copied, and the luxury of his new dwelling, in its oddities and extravagance, announced the puerilities and dotage of a perverted intellect reverting back in old age to the to3's of its infancy. In the throne-room a tree of gold sheltered with its branches and leaves a flock of golden birds whose diverse voices imitated the warbling of living birds. At the foot of the platform stood two golden lions of natural size which ronrotl when foreign envoys were presented. The high digiii ^^^ FROM FLORENCE TO YENICE. taries of the palace formed rows each with its specia, costume, its right of precedence, its attitud(j and othei details prescribed in a book written bj the hand of an emperor. Ambassadors bowed their foreheads to the ground three times and while in this prostrate attitude ! a theatrical machine elevated the prince and his throne to the ceiling in order that he might descend again in a more sumptuous apparel. His bootees were of purple and his robe was starred with jewels ; on his head glittered a high Persian tiara strewn with diamonds, attached to the cheeks by two strings of pearls and sur- mounted by a globe and a cross ; the most skilful coiffeurs had arranged false hair in tiers above his head and his face was painted. Thus bedizened he remained mute and impassible with fixed eyes in the attitude of a god revealing himself to mortal eyes ; lie was worshipped as an idol and paraded himself like a manikin.* Some idea of this luxuriousness, and of this worship and society, can be had in the church of San Yitale in Ravenna. It was built in the reign of Justinian and to-day, although defaced on the exterior, miserably repainted within, ruined in many places, or plastered with discordant additions, is still the most byzantine of western churches. It is a singular structure, and in it we find a new type of architecture as remote from Gre- cian as it is from Gothic conceptions. The edifice con- sists of a round dome surmounted by a cupola through which the light descends. On the cornice turns a two- story circular gallery composed of seven smaller half- domes, the eighth, largely expanded, forming an apse and containing the altar, in such a way that the central rotundity is enveloped in an enclosure of smaller ones, the globular form prevailing throughout like the pointed * These, proceedings and tbis attitude are already encountered witt Constantine and Constance. TIIEODOr.A. 193 form iu mediaeval cathedrals and the square form iji an- tique temples. In order to support the cupola eight heavy polygonal pillars, connected by round arcades, form a circle, while smaller columns, two and two, bind together the inter- mediate spaces. The effect is peculiar ; the eye accus- tomed to following columns in rows is here surprised with curious intersections, an odd diversity of profiles, with upright forms cut off by round arches and other changing aspects at every turn presented by its discord- ant features. This edifice is the organism of another kingdom, arranged according to unknown symmetries and for other conditions of being, like a lustrous spiral shell for one of the articulata or vertebrata, pompous and strange if you please, but of a less simple type and of a less healthy construction. Degeneracy is visible at once in the capitals of the pillars and columns. They are covered with clumsy flowers and by a coarse net- work ; others, still more changed, present a cypher ; the elegant corinthian capital is so deformed in the hands of these masons and embroiderers as to be noth- ing but a jumble of barbaric designs. The impression is stamped at once on contemplating the mosaics. You see the empress Theodora, the ancient stage-tumbler and circus prostitute, bearing offerings along with her female attendants : the face is pallid and almost gone like that of a consumptive lorette ; there are only enor- mous eyes, eyebrows joined together and a mouth ; the rest of the visage is reduced and thin ; the brow and chin are too small, and the head and body are lost un- der their ornamentation. There is nothing left of her but her ardent gaze and the feverish energy of a mea- gre and satiated courtezan, now enveloped in and over- burdened with the monstrous luxury of an empress ; a glittering diadem displays on her head stories of ruby and emerald stars ; pearls and diamonds are scattered in embroideries upon her robe, and her purple mantle li^4 FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. and shoes are embroidered with gold. The womeu around her sparkle like herself, striped with gold and strewn with pearls : the same fulness of eje absorbing the entire face, the same contraction of brow invaded by the hair, the same pallor of the blanched and plas- tered countenance. It matters little whether the mosa- icist is a mechanic copying a recognized type or a painter executing a portrait ; we have here an idea of the woman such as he beheld her or as she represented herself to him, an exhausted lorette bedizened with gold. On the other side appears Justinian, with his war- riors on his right and his clergy on the left, a sort of solemn simpleton in a grand brown mantle and purple bootees, decked and gilded like a shrine. He is an inert wooden figure ; his two ministers on the right are about to fall ; and his warriors, with their large oriental buck- lers are marionettes. The artist is fallen as low as his model. Back of the apse and on both flanks of the chapel run files of sacred personages : Christ between two an- gels and two saints holding a book ; near by diverse episodes from the Bible ; Abel sacrificing, Abraham en- tertaining his celestial visitants, and, on the vault above, peacocks, urns and animals. The art of group- ing figures is not yet extinct, — at least they know how to arrange a symmetrical composition. One can occa- sionally detect in a head of St. Peter or of St. Paul the remains of an antique type ; but the figures are stiff and jointless, closely resembling those of feudal tapes- tries. Ever the same large hollow eyes, the same cor- nea, the same brown, li-\dd, deathly visage : Christ seems like a corpse resuscitated from the tomb, the vision of a diseased intellect. I visited two or three other churches, Santa Agatha and the Baptistery. The latter is of the fifth century, somewhat like that of Florence, upheld by two stc ries THE TOMB OF TLaCIDIA. ^^5 of arcades, the columns and capitals of wliicli seem, throiigli their incongi'uities, to have been taken fi'om pagan temples ; already in the time of Constantine im- potent architects despoil pagan edifices of their mar bles and sculptures. Clumsy arabesques cover the walls, and on the vault appears the baptism of Jesua Christ around which the twelve apostles are ranged in a circle, so many figures of gigantic proportions in white tunics and gilded mantles. Their heads are small and of extraordmary length ; their shoulders are narrow and their eyes are buried in their great arched conca^^ties. Nevertheless the ascetic regime has not yet narrowed them down to the same extent as their des<^endants of the succeeding century at San Yitale ; St. Thomas still preserves a trace of energy; St. John the liaptist, haK-naked, is still half-alive ; his thigh, slioulder and head are sound. You see in the water the entire nudity of Jesus ; excepting his arm the mus- cles still contract. Perhaps the christian artist had some pagan painting before him and his eyes, obscured by the tjTanny of mystic ideas, followed contours which his dull trembling hand could not or dared not more than partially trace. Three or four other monuments fully demonstrate this decadence. That Placidia, an imperial princess to whom the Goth Ataulf her husband made a vv^edding present of fifty slaves, each bearing a basin filled with gold and another with precious stones, has her monu- ment near San Yitale. It is a small low temple in the shape of a cross into which one descends by several steps into a sort of sombre reddish subterranean cham- ber decked with mosaics. Rosaces, leaves, fantastic birds, fawns at the foot of the cross, evangelists, a rude figure of the good shepherd suiTounded by his lambs, the entire work is savage and of barbaric, extravagant luxuriousness. Several tombs find shelter in the humid shadows ; one of them represents the divine lamb, with i^6 FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. a fleece of shells, and under the cross of Placidia's sepulchre you perceive a flock — of what — sheep, horses or asses ? Another cave contains a tomb of the Exarch Isaac who died in the middle of the seventh century. You see bas-reliefs here which a modern mason would repudiate ; the three magi dressed as barbarians with the pantaloons, cloaks and caps of German shepherds, a Daniel, and a Lazarus whose head forms a quarter oi his body, and peacocks that can scarcely be recognized. All this art is feebleness and decomposition, like a de- cayed building tottering and going to pieces. Ea- venna, at this period, in passing into Lombard hands, only falls from one barbaric stage to another ; whether Byzantine or Gothic the two arts are equivalent. Along w ith man the soil becomes perverted ; the fevers of summer kill the inhabitants, the marshes spread out and the cit}'^ sinks in the earth. They have been obliged to raise the pavement of San Yitale in order to protect it from water. On visiting San Apollinare in Classe, half a league from the city, you see on your way a marble column ; this is the remnant of an entire city, the last fragment of a ruined basilica. The church itself seems to be abandoned; it subsists alone in a desert, formerly one of the three quarters of Ravenna ; the crypt is often invaded by the tide, while near it a forest of pines, mute and the sojourn of vipers, ha^ re- placed, on the side of the sea, the cultivation ai^d Lai i- tations of man. CHAPTER Y. VROM DOLOGNA TO PADUA.— ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY.— PAUIJA.- STATE OP SOCIETY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY AND OF ART IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.— SANTA MARIA DELI/ A RENE AND THE WORKS OF GIOTTO. It seems as if this country was entirely alluvial. It is an Italian Flanders. On both sides of the railway extends an immense plain, entirely green, filled with cattle and horses pasturiag. The vernal sun every- where diffuses its joyous beams ; nothing impedes them except, on the horizon, a belt of slender trees like a delicate silken fringe ; the broad cupola of the sky is of the tenderest azure. The soil is thoroughly soaked with water and, soon, the canals commence. After leaving Ferrara the road forms an elevated causeway protected from inunda- tions ; ditches abound everywhere, and pools of water filled with rushes ; on the right is the silvery surface of the Po, so placid that it seems to be motionless ; thus does it ghde along amply expanded amidst the universal fi'eshness among polished sands and islands covered with wood. You travel along a straight road compact and clean as in Flanders, between poplars of a charming green. The trees are all budding ; spring as far as the eye can see is diffusing itself over all things. Often, at the end of a long white ribbon of road rises a bell-tower, and then a cluster of houses appears on a flat piece of ground ; this is a village ; the houses, plas- tered Avhite and the ruddy bricks of the campanile relieve sharply on the sky. Excepting the Hght it might be called a Dutch landscape. Calm and spark- 1^'"^ FEOM FLORENCE TO VENICE. ling water is eyerywhere visible and, as evening ap- proaches, tbe frogs croak. Meanwhile, on the left, rises a lofty blue barrier, a drapery of mountains fringed with snow and relieving with exquisite delicacy ; the sky arches clear and pale and the young verdure overspreads the plain with an almost equally delicate tint. Padua, April 20. — Here I am in an Austrian country. One would scarcely believe it on seeing the books and engravings displayed in the shops of the booksellers, the most prominent being "le Maudit," the "Yie de Jesus" by E.enan and by Strauss, (tbe latter translated by Littre,) Victor Hugo, Hegel, etc. One engraving represents Garibaldi asleep, and Alexander Dumas contemplating bim ; Garibaldi lies on a floor and near him is a pitcher of water and a crust of bread, the epigraph, by Alexander Dumas, comparing him to Cincinnatus. — The bookseller tells me, with a smile, that "le Maudit" is prohibited in Italian, but is not yet forbidden in French ; portraits of Garibaldi are in- terdicted but not lithographs that contain a number of figures. Under this systematic administration the law is executed to the letter, and before making any inno- vations instructions are awaited from Vienna. Proceeding onward we find a city in good order, provincial in aspect, provided with arcades and a green grassy prato. Its tranquillity, its respectable appear- ance and its gray-coated sentinels remind the traveller that here, as in every well-governed city, the people must eat well, sleep better, take ice-creams at cafes, amuse themselves without disturbances and attend lectures at a university which create no excitement ; the only matter of serious import to the inhabitants is the payment of their taxes on the day prescribed. Thereupon he ponders over what it was in the middle- ages ; on its podestat Ezzelin the terror of children ; on the sufferings of its nobles who day and night screeched UNIVEliSALITl' OF ART IN ITALY. 190 with tortures; on iliose coudemned young seigneura who escaped from their guards, stabbed their judge and ripped up the face of their persecutor with their teeth ; on its sanguinary struggle and the romantio adventures of the Carrari. And here, as at Bologna, Florence, Sienna, Perugia, and Pisa, he cannot avoid contrasting the terrible, hazardous and energetic life of feudal cities and principalities with the orderly pn^- cision and tameness of modern monarchies. Here all that remains of the picturesque and the grand proceeds from the reaction of this great epoch. In every country a rich invention in the field of art is preceded by indomitable energy in the field of action. A father has fought, founded and suffered, heroically and tragically ; the son gathers fi'om the lips of the old heroic and tragic traditions, and, protected by the efforts of a previous generation, less menaced by danger, installed on paternal foundations, he imagines, expresses, narrates, sculptures or paints the mighty deeds of which his heart, still throbbing, feels the last vibration. "^ This is why works of art are so numerous in Italy ; each town has its own ; there are so many that the visitor is overwhelmed by them ; one would be obliged to rewrite his descriptions constantly. I am quite content not to go to Modena, Brescia or Mantua ; all I regret is Parma. I shall leave Italy with but a partial idea of Correggio ; but I shall compensate my- self with the Venetian masters. Even at Padua, which is a second-class city, it is necessary to make a choice. We go accordingly to the * Take, for example, the generation between 1820 and 1830 after the EevoUition and tlie wars of the Empire; Dutch art after the !>trug2:lc of the Netherlands with Spain ; Gothic architecture and medieval poesy after the consolidation of feudal society ; the litera- tm'e of the XVII century in France after the establishment of a regvi- lar monarchy; Greek ti'agedy, ai'chitecture and sculpture after the defeat of the Pei*siaus, etc. 300 FEOM FLO HENCE TO VENICE. cliurcli of Santa Maria dell' Arena, sikiated at the end of the city in a quiet corner. It is a private chapel, and stands in a large bourgeois garden, enclosed by walls, somewhat neglected, where vines on a green grass-plot are climbing up the fruit-trees. A servant pushes back a bolt, and the visitor is introduced into a nave which Giotto (1304) has covered with paintings He was tw^enty- eight years old, and he has here por- tra^^ed in thirty-seven great frescoes, the entire story ol Christ and the Virgin. No monument better repre- sents the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. Several traces of barbarism still remain ; for example, he does not know how to render all actions ; in his " Christ at the Sepulchre," the attendants expressing their grief open their mouths with a grimace, and his "Hell," like that of Bernardo Orcagna, is filled with the grotesque. The big hairy Satan is a scarecrow like those of our ancient mysteries, and inferior demons are consuming or sawing up small naked bodies with meagre legs heaped together as in a salting-tub. Near by the re- suscitated leaving their tombs, have spare and twisted claws, and, what is still more repulsive, the huge dis- proportioned heads of tadpoles ; the quaint and impo- tent fancy of the middle ages peers out and flourishes here as on the doors of the cathedrals. Jacomino of Verona, a minor friar of this epoch, described these torments of the damned with still greater triviality. Satan, according to him, commands " the wicked to be roasted like a pig on an iron turnspit ;" then, when the charred figure is brought to him, he replies : " Begone, tell that miserable cook that the morsel is not well done ; put it back on the fire and let it stay there." Dante ahme could free himself from this popular buf- foonery and endow his condemned ones with souls as proud as his ow n. He was here in Padua the same time as Giotto and, it is said, stayed at his house, both being friends. But the domain of painting is not the GIOTTO. 201 Bame as that of poesy, and what one accomplished with words the other could not accomplish with ccjlors. People were not yet familiar enough with the muscles and energies of the human organism to combine, like Michael Angelo, in a few colossal and contorted figures the tragic elements which Dante displayed in his nu- merous visions and in his lugubrious scenery. More- over, the talent and humor of the painter were not those of the poet ; Giotto was as gay as Dante was sad ; his fine genius, facile invention, his love of noble- ness and pathos, led him toward ideal personages and afi'ecting expressions, and it is in this field, peculiar to him, that here, for the first time, with extraordinary richness and success, he innovated and created. Here, for the first time in a fresco, we find almost antique heads ; it is the same stroke of genius as that of Nicholas of Pisa : after a lapse of fifty years paint- ing and sculpture unite, and healthy, regular beauty reappears on the w^alls of churches as on the tombs of the saints. Around Christ on the Cross and in the Last Judgment, the noble heads of the saints have the solidity of structure and the firm chins of the Greek statues : nothing can be graver and simpler than the draperies, and nothing more beautiful than the figures of the ten seraphims crowned with glories. Extending along the entire nave, at the base of the wall, is a range of ideal women representing, in gray, the different vir- tues, all robust and calm, ample and finely draped ; two especially. Charity and Hope, seem to be Roman em- presses ; another. Justice, possesses a face of the pweetest and purest type. You feel that the painter lovingly seeks after and discovers perfection of form ; his Christs are not portraits ; their features are too reg- ular and too serene; one of them in the "Marriage Feast at Cana," in a wine-colored mantle reminds one of that which Raphael has placed in his " Transfigura- tion." The artist, e^ddentlj', does not paint from the 203 PKOM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. model before him but, like Raphael, " according to a certain conception of his own." This inventiveness is observable on all sides, in his landscapes, in his archi- tecture, in the careful composition of his groups, and, above all, in the expressions. Some there are which come direct from the heart, so spontaneous, so true that none more genuine can be found. At the foot of the cross the Virgin in a blue hood, her brow wrinkled and pale, swoons and yet, through a supreme effort, re- mains erect.* The Magdalen extends her arms to the resuscitated Christ, mth stupor and tenderness, as if desirous of advancing and yet remaining fixed to the ground. Lazarus, enveloped in his bandages, and rigid like a mummy in its coffer, but erect and with an- imated eyes, is an overpowering apparition. — This man possessed genius, ideas, feeling everything, save science which is the fruit of time, and finish in his execution ; his drawings were generalizations, consisting simply of outlines and folds of drapery ; in address, and in the art of the hand he was deficient. In a neighboring church, that of the Eremitani, are some frescoes by Mantegna, quite perfect, admirable in relief and of studied correctness ; this is what a century and a half would have taught Giotto ; what a painter he would have been had he mastered such processes ! Perhaps the world would have seen a second Raphael. * This reminds us of one of Corneille's lines describing his Roman heroine suddenly falling like a statue : "NoTJ, je ne pleure pas, madame, mais je menro.^* CHAPTER VI. PADUA, CONTINUED.— SAN GIUSTINA.— SAN ANTONIO.— THE SCULP- TORS AND DECORATORS OF THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTUltlES.— THE MUNICIPAL SYSTEM COISIPARED WITH TUB EXTENDED GOVERNMENTS OF MODERN TIMES.— THE ADVANTA- GES AND DRAWBACKS OF CONTEMPORARY CI\aLIZATION. We return to the Prato, which is green and radiant with Spring. A canal crosses it and statues are ranged among the trunks of the trees. Around it rise high walls of red brick ; blue domes profile themselves in powerful masses against the pure blue sky, and, on the cornices of the churches, birds are carolling in the midst of the solitude and the silence. In front, is San Giustina and its eight domes. Al- though built in the sixteenth century the byzantine form, with its rotundities, prevails. Spherical projec- tions form a circle around the cupolas ; within, between round arcades, the roof hollows out into concave buck- lers, its ample vault expanding like an interior firma- ment filled with light. One comprehends immediately here the expressive force of lines. According as the ruling form differs so does the general sentiment differ. The acute angle and upspringing ogive excite mystic emotion ; the right angle and the solid square pose of the Greek construction suggest an idea of calm serenity ; the byzantine imperial or modern curve of the round arch gives a decorative aspect. Such is the impression made by this church ; with its portal of black, red and white marbles, its square pilasters, its projecting entab- latures, its Roman capitals, its gi-and proportions and its fine hght it imposes on you not without a certain degree of quaintness and pomposity. Behind the 204 FEOM FLORENCE TO YENICE. choir, and by the hand of Veronese, a dehige of little angels, amidst strong contrasts of light and shadow, is precipitating itself on the spot where the saint, in a splendid robe of yellow silk, surrenders himself to the executioner about to sever his throat. The rest of the edifice is filled with theatrical sculptures, gesticulating martyrs, rumpled draperies and writhing flesh-forms in the style of Bernini, only still more insipid. The grandiose of the sixteenth century thus terminates with the affectation of the eighteenth. But the principal monument, the most celebrated for its sanctity and the richest in works of art, is the church of San Antonio. On the solitary square surrounding it stands the bronze equestrian statue of the condottiero Guattemalata, executed by Donatello, and the first that was cast in Italy (1453). In his cuirass, with his head bare and his baton of command in his hand, he sits firmly on a stout-limbed charger, a vigorous animal for use and for war, and not for show ; his bust is full and square ; his great two-handed sword hangs below his horse's belly ; his long spurs with big rowels can bury themselves deep in the flesh when a perilous leap is to be made over a fosse, or to surmount a palisade ; he is a rude warrior ; and as he sits there in his harness you see that, like Sforza his adversary, he has passed his life in the saddle. Here, as at Florence, Donatello dares to risk the entire truth, the crude details thai seem ungracious to the vulgar, the faithful imitation of the actual person with his own features and professional traits ; the result of which is, here as in Florence, a fragment of living humanity, snatched breathing out of bis century, and prolonging, through its originality and energy, the life of that century down to our own. As to the church it is very peculiar, it being an Italian- Gothic structure complicated with Byzantine cupolas ; round domes, pointed spires, little columns surmounted with ogive arcades, a facade borrowed from the Eomau JESUITIC TASTE. 205 basilica, a balcony modelled after Yenetian palaces fuse together in one composite medley the ideas of three or four centuries, and of three or four countries. The great saint of the city, St. Anthony, lies here, one of the leading characters of the twelfth century, a mystic preacher who addressed himself to fishes as St. Francis did to birds, tlie fishes flocking to him in shoals and signifying to him that they comprehended him. The sanctuary contains his tongue and chin ; at the most flourishing period of Jesuitic devotion, in 1G90, it was decorated by Parodi with an inci-edible expenditure of magnificence and affectation. The window^s are em- bossed with silver, and a profusion of gay and animated marble figures Avith arch expressions and suffused eyes cover the walls with their sentimental graces. Back of the chapel a legion of angels bear away the saint in glory. There are perhaps sixty of them crowded and piled together like a swarm of cupids on a boudoir ceiling, with trim legs, smooth little bodies, pouting visages, demure, and with plump dimpled cheeks ; some, leaning on the cross have the lively and tender smile of a grisette asleep and dreaming. The whole chapel seems to be an enormous console of ornamental marble, and, to complete the impression, here and there throughout the church, are gallant virgins coquet- tishly lowering their coifs and playing with their fat hamhinos. The vapid devotion of the decadence evi- dently usurped for its own use the sanctuary of simple old piety and overspread the popular faith with its owm veneering and varnish. Other chapels show another age of the same senti- ment ; one, on the left, dedicated to the saint, was built and decorated by ten sculptors of the sixteenth centur}-. Riccio, Sansovino, Falconetto, Aspetti, Giovanni di Milano, Tullio Lombardo and others. Richness of imagination, the superb sentiment of a pagan, natural life, the entire spirit of tho renaissance here shows itself 206 FROM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. ill striiiing characteristics. The fagade of white marble. sewn with caissons of colored marble framed by black marble, resembles an antique triumphal arch. Marble columns covered with bas-reliefs and surmounted by round arcades give to it a monumental entrance. Shell niches, friezes of foliage, bucklers, horses, naked men, swans, fishes and cupids expose in the background the full diversity and breadth of heroic or animated nature. A midtitude of petty sculptured figures embroider the walls and pillars ; here the naked Fates among grapes and flowers, with a somewhat lank and literal imitation of the human figure for the first time comprehended ; there a resurrection in Avhich a studied aim at pictur- esque form mingles with the poetic sentiment of ideal form. And, as if to testify to the ardent faith which ever endures the same through all artistic transforma- tions, you find amidst this imposing sensual decoration hundreds of ex-votos, in the shape of crutches, little ten- sous pictures and a quantity of charity boxes ap- pealing for contributions. Nothing is wanting here for the assemblage on one spot of the entire series of human sentiments. Facing this monument built by the pagan renaissance, is a chapel of the fourteenth century, that of St. Felix, ogival, painted and gilded, whose niches, similar to trefoils or bishops' bonnets, place gothic art before the eye bright- ened with oriental reflections through its proximity to Venice. It is red and sombre ; its azure vaults deflect into small arches ; arabesques run over the entiie arch- way ; sculptured stalls with gilded canopies divide into finials ; ancient paintings by Altichierri and Jacopo Avanzi, figures draped and armed as in the middle ages, crowd together stiff, as yet, and awkward, among gothic castles covered with Saracenic ornamentation. Venice, at this time, had a foothold in the Orient, and at Cyprus she alone carried on the christian crusade. But what makes this church a really unique monument, TOMBS. 20* a memorial of all ages, are the tombs it contains. In the church of the Eremataiii I had jiLst seen those of the Carrari. No work is better fitted to make us compre- hend the tastes and ideas of a century ; the architect's hand has labored at it as well as the sculptor's, and whatever diversity there may be in the monuments all r-ynibolize the same idea, one of simple and prime sig- nificance, that of deatli, in such a way that the specta- tor follows in their differences the different modes in wliich man regarded the most formidable moment of life, the most poignant, the most universal and the most intelligible of his interests. The series here is com- plete. A lady deceased in 1427 sleeps, reclining in an alcove ; underneath her three small figures in a shell niche gi^avely meditate, and their heavy heads, their attitudes and their drapery are as simple as the funereal chamber in which her dead body reposes. Near this are tombs of the sixteenth century, that of Cardinal Bem- bo, a grand fig-ure somewhat bald with a superb beard and the spirited air of a portrait by Titian ; the other, as gi'andiose and pompous as a triumph, that of the Venetian general Contarini. A frieze of vessels, cui- rasses, arms and bucklers winds around the courses of marble. Shouting tritons and caryatides of chained captives display the emblems and insignia of maritime victory. A series of nude bodies, and heads having a simple air rise upward, possessing the vigor and frank- ness of expression characteristic of a healthy art in its bloom and vitality. On the sides are displayed two fig- ures of women, one young and spirited in a close-fitting tunic, the breasts salient, and the other aged and weep- ing but not less robust and muscular. On the top of the pyramid a beautiful Virtue with downcast eyes, but with leg and breast exposed, seems like one of the youthful and glorious divinities of Veronese. You con- tinue on, and suddenly, at the end of the seventeenth century, the change in taste appears ; art becomes de- -OS FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. votional, worldly, pretentious and vapid. A tomb of 1684 combines figures half naked or cuirassed in pagan panoply, but bending over, affected, and in a flutter of curtains, garlands and skulls. Another of 1690, is a scaffolding of men, angels, busts and pennons, be- ginning with a desiccated skull and crossbones and ending with, at the top, a winged skeleton blowing a l)last on a trumpet. After the plain memorial repre- senting actual death comes the pagan memorial over- spreading death with heroic pomp ; then the devotional memorial which puts into the same parade the horrors of the sepulchre and all mundane elegancies. How gladly one reverts back to the works of the Re- naissance ! How noble, how vigorous, how grand man seems between gothic insufficiency and modern arti- ficiality ! The rest of the day I passed in the choir. Large bronze statuettes stand on a bronze balustrade near bronze gates. Bronze carpets the enclosure, cov- ers the altar, bristles in bas-reliefs, rises on the pillars, a.nd mounts upward in candelabras. Crowds of ener- getic figures display themselves everywhere in multi- plied bosses on the sombre and lustrous tints of the gleaming metal. Here the apostles of Aspetti (1593) through their proud stature and disordered drapery, seem the grandchildren of Michael Angelo ; there a can- delabra by Riccio (1488) twice a man's height, with a base three feet square, rears itself upward in tier upon tier of figures ; we cannot imagine greater richness of invention, so many and such diverse scenes, such luxury of ornamentation, such a complete world both christian and pagan magnificently combined in a single mass and yet distributed with so much art that every tier en- hances the value of the others, its swarm of details pro- ducing groupings and its multitudes a unity. On the square sides are displayed stories of the New Testament, the interment of Jesus amidst the despairing cries and gestures of a weeping crowd, and, again, Jesus in limbo, RENAISSANCE FANCY. SOS amongst the stout bodies and fine naked limbs of re- deemed sinners. On the cornices, and, here and there, on the angles and mouldings are pagan forms framing in the christian tragedy. Renaissance fancy has full [)lay in a profusion of tritons, horses, twining ser- pents and torsos of women and children. Centaurs bear naked cupids on theu' cruppers brandishing torch- es ; other cupids sport with masks or hold musical in- struments ; fawns and satyrs bound amidst the foliage ; invention overflows, all this triumph of natural life, these panathenaic poesies of an unfettered creative hu- man imagination displaying their action and exuber- ance in order to deck the candelabra which bears the pascal taper. What the worker in bronze did in those days is in- comparable. This art, that of the goldsmith, antici- pates painting a century, and attains to its perfection while the other is just beginning. Master of all its processes it encroaches on those of its rivals. Knowl- edge of types, familiarity with the nude, the movement of draperies, study of expression, of composition, of per- spective, — nothing is lacking. The modeller's thumb dispatches a picture complete, — thirty or forty figures grouped on different planes, active and excited multi- tudes, the entire human tragedy spread out on the public square between porticoes and temples.'^ Two by Donatello on the altar panels,t and twelve by Velano and Andrea Briosco on the panels of the choir, for fecimdity of genius, boldness of conception, the management and arrangement of crowds, surpass any- thing I have ever encountered. Judith and the entire army of Holofernes are massacred and put to flight • Samson is wrenching away the columns of the temple * See the " Martyi'dom of St. Lawrence" by Baccio Bandinelli in the well-known engraving. t 1446-1449 210 FROM FLORENCE TO VENICE. crumbling under its crowded galleries ; Solomon is seen under three stories of architecture surrounded by the assembled people ; the ten tribes of Israelites crowd around the brazen serpent their bodies writhing and swollen with the bite of reptiles, suppliant women handing forward their infants to be cured, wounded men in heaps and in contortions, all in a vast land- scape of rocks, palm-trees and flocks which diffuses the grandeur of a tranquil nature around the agitations of suffering humanity. All these souls and bodies live, and their energy reacts and communicates itself to the spectator. One feels exalted after a contemplation of them. Hence the nobleness of this art. Let the por- traits and history of the men of this da^^ be contem- plated and we find that they fought the battle of life well, and that among artists, this exalts them to the highest rank. Let man strive and suffer, be wounded and downstricken, it matters not ; it is his lot and he is made for trial and struggle. The great thing is to struggle bravely, to will, to work, and to create ; the great source of action in him must not be wasted in a stagnant pool or in an administrative canal; it must flow on and steadily expand, not like a capricious torrent but like a broad river ; the current once free should flow always, disturbed and tempestuous if necessary, but fertilizing, inexhaustible, and, from time to time, bright beneath celestial splendor and joy. At the last hour he may disappear in the sea ; his career w over. At each turn of the century death swallows uj and disperses the living generation ; but it has no hold on its past. The dead may rest tran- quilly ; their work is done and their posterity in its turn, clearing its own pathway, must be content, when, after similar labor it lies down in similar repose. On contemplating the great works which fill all Italy, on pondering over the decadence which followed tLeir production, on remarking how greatly the generat or MODERN STATES. 311 which produced them surpassed ours in active vigoi and in spontaneous invention, on reflecting that, thus far, all civilizations have flourished only to wither and to turn to dust, one asks himself ^^hether that in which we live will not meet with the same fate and whether the great monument which protects us will not in its turn provide fragments for some unknown con struction in which a renewed humanity will secure pro- tection of a superior order. Sentiment, in this connec- tion, must not be listened to ; our response must come from history and from analysis. Here are the founda- tions of our edifice, and, at first view, they seem to guarantee its solidity. The States of modern times are not simple cities provided with a territory and which extermination or conquest may destroy, like Sienna, Florence, Carthage, Crotona or Athens. They embrace thirty or forty mil- lions of men forming distinct races and nations, and, so regarded, may resist invasions. Napoleon could not make a subject of Spain, so weak, nor put down Ger- many, so divided. When in 1815 William Humboldt proposed to partition France, too strong as he thought, the allies drew back, aw^are that at the end of twenty- five years the pieces w^ould of themselves again unite. Look at the difficulties of Russia in these days in re- spect to a third of Poland. A garrison of five hundred thousand men, the haK of a nation, is necessary to re- strain the other half, and the profit is not worth the expense. In the second place, the European states are formed of diverse races and nations ; hence one may replace or restore its neighbor if its neighbor falls. When Portugal, Spain and Italy fell in the seventeenth cen- tury, England, France and Holland resumed a,nd con- tinued in their own way and for their own account the work they began. If in the course of a hundred years France should become a common administrative camp, 313 FEOM FLOEENCE TO VENICE. fclie protest ant nations of England, Germany, tht United States and Australia would individually develop and their civilization flow back on France at the end of two or three centuries, as that of France, after two oi three centuries, now flows back on Italy and Spain. A monarchy, on the contrary, like . that of China, a the- ocracy like that of India, a group of cities like GreecCj a grand unique organization like the Roman Empire, wholly perish for the lack of equal and independent neighbors to subsist after them and renew their exist- ence. Three-quarters of the labor of humanity is now done by machinery, and the number of machines like the perfectibility of processes, is constantly increasing. Manual labor diminishes in the same ratio, and, conse- quently, the number of thinking beings increases. We are accordingly exempt from the scourge which de- stroyed the Greek and Roman world, that is to say the reduction of nine-tenths of the human race to the con- dition of beasts of burden, overtasked, and perishing, their destruction or gradual debasement allowing only a small number of the elite in each state to subsist. Almost all of the republics of Greece and of ancient and modern Italy* have perished for want of citizens. At the present day the machinery now substituted for subjects and slaves prepares multitudes of intelligent beings. In addition to this, again, the experimental and pro- gressive sciences are now recognized as the sole legiti- mate mistresses of the human intellect, and the only safe guides for human activity. This is unique in the world. Among the Islamites, under the Ptolemies, and * Sparta perished di oXiyar^paoTtiar, says Aristotle. At Flor- ence, there were but 2,500 voting citizens in the time of Savonarola, See Venice also. At the commencement of the sixteenth century the number of citizens enjoying political rights of all kinds in Italy wa« estimated at 18,000. PROGllESy OF SCIENCE. 218 m Italy in the sixteenth century, the sciences were confined to a small circle of the curious who might at any time have been extinguished by a proscription. Now they have obtained control, and as they have visi- bly ameliorated practical life public assent and all pri- vate interests rally around them. Moreover, as their methods are fixed, and their discoveries constantly augmenting, it may be demonstrated that they will go on indefinitely renewing and completing the human under- standing. Other developments of the mind, art, poetry, and religion may fail, diverge or languish ; but this one cannot fail to endure, to diffuse itself, and to suggest to man forever concrete views with which to regulate his faiths and govern his actions. These very sciences, having finally embraced in their domain moral and political affairs, and daily pene- trating into education, transform the idea entertained by man of society and of Hfe : from a militant brute who regards others as prey and their prosperity as a danger, they transform him into a pacific being N\ho considers others as auxiliaries and their prosperity as an advantage. Every blade of wheat produced, and every yard of cloth manufactured in England dimin- ishes so much the more the price I pay for my wheat and for my cloth. It is for my interest there- fore not only not to kill the Englishman who pro- duces the wheat, or manufactures the cloth, but to encourage him to produce and manufacture twice as much more. Never has human civilization encountered similar conditions. For this reason it is to be hoped that the civiHzation now existing, more solidly based tL an others, will not decay and melt away like the othere ; at least there is reason to believe that amidst partial convul- sions and failures, as in Poland and in Turkey, it wiU subsist and perfect itself on the principal areas whereon its constructions are now seen rising. 214 FKOM FLOIIENCE TO VENICE. But, on the otlier hand, the magnitude of states, the development of industry, the organization of the sciences, in consolidating the edifice, prove detrimental to the individuals who live in it, every man finding him- self belittled through the enormous extension of the system in which he is comprised. Societies, in the first place, in order to become more stable have become too large, and most of them in order the better to resist foreign attack have too greatly subordinated themselves to their governments. Among the men who compose them nine out of ten, and commonly ninety-nine out of a hundred, do not concern themselves about public affairs ; they are in- different to general passions, and enter into the com- munity Hke beams in a building, or at least vegetate, discontented and inert, in petty pleasures and in petty ideas after the fashion of parasite mosses on an old roof. Compare this life to that of the Athenians in the fifth century, and to that of the Florentines in the fourteenth. Moreover, in order to become efficacious, industry has become too subdivided and man, transformed into a drudge, becomes a revolving wheel. Fourier used to say that man, in the ideal partnership of the globe, on finding that little pies had not yet arisen to a level with civilization, would collect two caravans of a hundred thousand culinary artists on a suitable spot, say on ^ the banks of the Euphrates, and there compete under grand combinations of genius and of experiences ; the victor on receiving a centime per head for every person, would become very rich and, moreover, receive a medal. This is the grotesque image of our indus- trialism. Consider, in a universal exposition, the enor- mous effort directed to the perfecting of wash-bowls, boots and elastic cushions, along with their propor- tionate recompenses. It is sad to see a hundred thousand families employing their arms and thirty THE EFFECT OF SCIENTIFIC PEOGEESS. 215 superior men expending their genius in efforts to in- crease the lustre of a piece of mushn ! In the last place, science, in order to become experi- mental and sure, being subdivided into proyinces grow- iug smaller and smaller, the truly thoughtful, who are the inventors, are obliged to restrict themselves each to a special compartment, and there Uve confined to a chemical or philological recess like a cook in his kitchen. In the mean time, facts having accumulated to a vast extent the human head becomes overcharged ; there is no longer an Aristotle : those who desire to attain to an approximative idea of the whole are forced to abandon the life of the body and overburden their brain ; the contagion spreading through the rest of society, a too highly developed cerebral life undermines the health both physical and moral. Compare the German doctors, the men of letters, even our pale and polished men of the world, all our amateurs, all our learned specialists, to Greek citizens, — philosophers, artists, warriors and gymnasts, — to those Italians of the sixteenth century who each possessed, besides a military education, five or six arts or talents, and, many of them, a perfect encyclopsedia. The work of man, in brief, has become stable because it has expanded ; but it has expanded only because man has hecotne specialj and a specialty ?^ar'»•o^<;ld empire clock, decked with four pretty pensive spiritualis- tic women, two poor expressive old men with sharp and salient muscles, and two young barbers with wings bearing crowns. It would seem as if these artists were barren of all personal impressions, that they had noth- ing of their own to say, that the human form had no voice for them, that they had to fall back to their port- folios to find suggestions of its lines, that all their tal ent lay in composing a curious enigma according to the latest {©sthotic and symbolic manual. Death, neverthe* TITIAN*S ST. PETER MARTYR. 249 less, is important, and it certainly seems that one might saj' something of one's ovm. about it without a book ; but I begin to think that we no longer have any idea of it any more than of an}- other matter of extreme inter- est. We drive it out of our minds as if it were a disa- gi'eeable and unsuitable guest. When we attend a fu- neral we do it from a sense of propriety, chatting all the time with our neighbor on business or on literature. We have emerged out of the tragical condition. If we apprehend any great misfortune on the horizon it is, at most, an affair of the pocket, simply involving transi- tion from the first to the fourth story.^ Our imagina- tion seems to be absorbed by an infinite diversity of petty excitements and perplexities, visits, correspond- ence, gossip, disappointments and the rest. Smoothed off and flittered away as we are, through what portion of our being or experience could we comprehend the anxieties, the stupendous and prolonged terrors, the corporeal and phrenetic joyousness which once arose like mountains above the level of human life? Ai't lives on grand determinations as criticism Hves on nice distinctions, and hence it is that we are no longer artists but critics. The same idea recurs to one on contemplating the paintings. There are many admirable ones in the chapel of the church dedicated to the Sacred Chaplet. One of these by Titian is entitled " St. Peter Martyr." f Domenichino has repeated the same subject at Bologna, but his personages are disfigured by an ignoble fear. Those of Titian are grand, Hke combatants. That which impressed him was not the pain or grimaces of a convulsed face, but the powerful action of a murder, the display of an arm bestowing a blow, the agitated drapery of a man in flight, and the magnificent erect * Meaning a change from superior to inferior apartmerts. — TV. \ Lately destroyed by fire. — Tr. 350 VENICE. trunks of trees extending their sombre branches above a scene of bloodshed. Still more vehement is a " Cru- cifixion" by Tintoretto. All is excitement and disorder. The poesy of light and shadow fills the air with brilliant and lugubrious contrasts. A jet of yellow light falls across the nude figure of Christ, which seems to be a glorified corpse. Above him float the heads of female saints in a flood of glowing atmosphere while the body of the perverse thief, contorted and savage, embosses the sky with its ruddy muscular forms. In this tem- pest of intense, angry daylight, it seems as if the crosses wavered, and that the sufferers were going to be precipitated ; to complete this grandiose confusion, this poignant emotion, you perceive in the background un- der a luminous cloud a mass of resuscitated bodies. The entire top of the wall is covered with paint- ings by the same hand. Christ is ascending into para- dise, and around him are grand naked angels rushing through space and furiously sounding their trumpets. The Virgin is borne off by an impetuous crowd oi small angels in various complicated attitudes, whilst beneath her are the apostles shouting and thrown violently backward. Light vibrates on all sides and on all the canvases. There is not an atom of the atmos- phere that does not palpitate ; life is so overflowing as to breathe and bubble up from stones, trees, ground and clouds, in every color and in every form that be- long to the universal feverishness of inanimate nature. CHAPTER IV. FKOMENADES.— SANTA-MARIA DELL' ORTO -SAN GIOBBE.-LA QUI DECCA.— I GESUATI.— I GESUITL— MANNERS, CUSTOMS AND CEAR ACTERS.— MISERY.— PUBLIC SriMT.— IDLENESS AND REVERIE AT VENICE. A]f)7il 27. — I see pictures every day by Titian, Tinto- retto and Paul Veronese, but I am not yet ready to speak of them ; they form a complete and too rich a world. Tintoretto especially, is extraordinary ; one can have no idea of him without visiting Venice. My walk to-day is to Santa-Maria dell' Orto to see his great paintings of " The Worship of the Golden Calf" and " The Last Judgment." I find the church closed and the pictures rolled up and taken a^va^ nobody knows where. The edifice seems to be aban- doned. On one side is a dilapidated cloister broken open and serving as a lumber-yard, with the grass growing fresh and green along the arcades. This is one of my gTeatest disappointments in Venice. The gondolier makes the tour of the city away to the north, and before this plain of light all vexa- tions and disappointments are forgotten. One never tires of the sea, of the infinite horizon, of the little distant bands of earth emerging beneath a dubious verdure, of the strange close-packed streets, almost do- Berted, where the bricks of the houses totter, under- mined by the water ; where the piles below, incrusted with shells, are so diminished as to render a crash imminent. San Giobbe appears, a small church of the E-enaissance, white and bare outside, excepting an elegant and delicately ornamented entrance. The in- terior overflows with ornament ; a monument by Claude Perrault, extravagant but not lifeless, displays 252 VENICE. over a black marble sarcopliagus a small sleeping angel, gross and vigorous, related one might say to the Flemish cherubs ; lower down are crowned lions crouch ing with the grotesque solemnity of heraldic brutes However decorated or perverted a church in Italy may be it always contains something beautiful and interesting. For example here is a fine picture by Paris Bordone, an old saint with a heavy beard bear- ing a cross between two companions, and, alongside of these, a pretty cloister bordered with columns uniting in arcades and whose cistern, decked with acanthus leaves, blooms luxuriantly above the pavement of the esplanade. These are the agreeable features of these promenades. One knows not what he is to encounter. He starts with two or three names of places in his head and that is all. He glides along noiselessly and is never jolted. No one speaks to him. He passes from a gilded temple crowded with figures to a soUtary and dilapidated quarter. It seems as if he were liberated from his bodily tenement and that some benevolent genius delighted in feeding his mind with phantasmagoria and wondrous spectacles. The gondola skirts Santa-Chiara and the side of the Champ de Mars. The spaces of water become broader and its mottled undulations swell gently under the breeze with an indescribable intermingling of molting tones and hues. This is not ordinary water. En- closed within canals, and tinged by the exudations and infiltrations of the human colony it assumes an earthy ruddiness combined with pale, ochry tints and bluish miry darks, resembling the confused mixture of colors of a painter's palette. Under a northern sky it would be lugubrious ; but here under the illuminating sun and in the silkiness of the tender azure overspreading the celestial cauopy it fills the eye with almost physi- cal delight. Yeritabl}^ one swims in luminousness. It pours down from the sky, the water colors it and the JESUIT CHURCHES. 258 reflections multiply it a liimdredfold ; there is iiotliing, even to the white and rosy houses, which does not re- flect it while the ])oesy of forms ever adds to and com- pletes the poes}' of brightness. Even in this miserable and abandoned quarter we find palaces and facades adorned with columns. Poor and commonplace houses have large balconies enclosed within balustrades and windows indented with trefoils or capped with ogives, and reliefs of intermingled foliage and thorns. One loses himself in reverie. In vain does the Giudecca canal, almost deserted await its flotillas in order to people its noble port ; one muses over nothing but colors and lines. Three lines and three colors form the entire spectacle : the broad moving crystal, of a dark sea-green which winds about with a liard lustrous hue , above, detached in bold rehef, the row of buildings fol- lowing its curve ; still higher in fine, the pure, infinite and almost pallid sky. The gondolier draws up to the quay and pretends that it is necessary to see the church of the Gesuati. We perceive a pompous fagade of gigantic composite columns, then a nave whose corinthian colonnade is pretentiously joined to large pillars ; on the flanks, small chapels whose Greek pediments bear ourved con- soles ; a coating of variegated marbles, an infinity of statues and bas-reliefs, insipid and very appropriate ; on the ceiling a prett}- piece of boudoir painting in the shape of trim, rosy and bare legs ; — in brief a work of frigid luxury and costly magnificence. The Italian eighteenth century is still worse than ours. Our works always show some degree of moderation because they preserve some degree of finesse ; but theirs plant them- selves triumphantly on the extravagant. I saw yester- day a similar church, that of the Gesuiti. Its walls and pavement are incrusted with green and white marbles, let into each other in order to form flowers and branchings. On the arches gold twists around in 2J4 VENICE. the shapo of vases, pompons and flourishes, all seeming like the velvet and gilt paper hangings of a drawing- room costly enough to attract the wealthy. The urns, lyres, flames, clusters of foliage and white garlands that emboss the domes could not be counted. Spiral columns of green marble flecked with white support tho baldachin of the altar, and, on this, meagre and sentimental statues, — Christ with the cross, God the Father seated on a huge white marble globe, — parade themselves supported by angels, both being sheltered by a roof of marble shell-work so odd as to provoke laughter. Grotesque extravagance displays itself even in the grand architectural lines ; not content with ordi- nary forms they have widened the arch of the nave, reducing its curve so low that it resembles the span of a bridge, and flanking this with cupolas that look hke concave bucklers. You feel the effort of a barren and laboring imagination ending in rhetorical superla- tives and in concetti, and which, in polished sonorous periods, furnishes a parlor worship for women and worldlings. All thes/3 follies of the decadence vanish alongside; of two pictures belonging to the great epoch. The first is an " Assumption" by Tintoretto. Around the Virgin's tomb grand old men bend forward and express their amazement with tragic gesture ; they have those vigorous and lordly airs of the head which in the Vene- tian painters agree so well with the violent motion ol draperies, and with powerful effects of light, shadow and color. The Virgin, aloft, whirls in the air, and the pallid, drowned changeable tints of her purple robe render still more striking her vigorous brown face, small brow, low hair and virile attitude. A woman of the people possessing the energy and magnificence of a queen, is the idea which arrests the eye ; no painter had a greater admiration of the pomp and sincerity of force. Tintoretto encounters in the street a market or Titian's "MiVKTYRDOM of jst. Lawrence." 25Q a boat woman, and bears away with liim her perfect and rugged image ; he surrounds her with the oriental and patrician lustre of princely rank ; he showers the neighborhood with a deluge of small heads cravated with wings, distributing them even over the drapery held by the apostles. He is quite indifferent to the re- semblance of his bevy of angels to a dish of decapi- tated heads ; at one dash he translates the instantane- ous apparition to his canvas and there leaves it, for his work is finished. The other picture, a St. Lawrence by Titian, seems a fantasy of some Italian Eembrandt, a vision in gloom. It is night ; at first nothing is distinguishable but a great blackness vaguely spotted with two or three Hghts. It consists of a wide street. In a dusky tint like that of a cavern illuminated by a dying flambeau you perceive, through their more opaque darkness, some architectural forms, a statue and a distant multi- tude. A peculiar lantern, a sort of torch within iron bars, glimmers at the end of a stick, while the brazier casts its sinister beams along the pavement. Near this a superb executioner, a sort of tragic porter, leans backward, the muscles of his breast swelling with vinous tones in powerful relief on a herculean torso ; around him black reflections rest on cuirasses, or trem- ble on the blue steel of the lances. Meanwhile a luminous flame descends from the sky above, piercing the shadows like a glory, a bright gleam falling on the white figure of the martyr, and arousing on its passage the yellow flickerings, indistinct palpitations and mys- terious floating dust in the shadows. April 27. — Mamiers, customs and character. — I go this evening to the Benedetto theatre. Toward midnight, on returning, the dimly lighted and crooked streets, lost betwcv'in the high houses, seem like places of ambush. The audience is poor ; the house is almost empty ; 256 VENICE. out of a large number of boxes there are only about twenty lialf filled. Many of the lower class of the bourgeoisie and even the common people are in the parterre. And yet the house is beautiful. They play this evening, "Mary Stuart" translated from Schiller. To-morrow they are to give un interes- santissima comedia del Signore Dumas padre, Mademoi- selle de Belle-lie. I have seen others by him at Flor- ence. We furnish the whole of Europe with vaude- villes, comedy, agreeable romances, toilet objects, etc. I have seen abroad, on the tables of nobles, collections of free songs, and, in splendid libraries, Paul de Kock's novels, richly bound, on the lowest shelves. By our works we are judged: dancing-masters, hairdressers, vaudevillists, lorettes and milliners, — but few other titles are bestowed upon us, save, perhaps, that of soldiers. The theatrical corps is as pitiful as possible. The faces of the musicians are subjects for pictures: one might pronounce them fatigued, haggard old tailors. The prompter prompts so loud that his voice sounds like a continuous bass. Mary Stuart in a black velvet robe, has the hands of a washerwoman ; she must cer- tainly cook her own dinner and sweep her own room; otherwise she has vigor, a sort of furious and brutal energy. Elizabeth, rouged by the square foot, attired in frills and mock jewelry, responds to her in a shrill and stifled voice ; both of them are market-women showing their teeth. In order to get Mortimer to assassinate her rival she rants like a maniac. All overdo the matter horribly, which, perhaps, is requisite for an Italian parterre. Mary Stuart is called out three times after the scene when she upbraids Elizabeth. This is only a second-class theatre. "La Fenice" and the other leading theatres are closed. The nation is so hostile to Austria that a noble, indifferent oi politic, would not dare to go to them ; it would be re- TAXATION. 257 garded as a sign of satisfaction and lie would be hooted at. With such a disposition before them thea- tres may well decline. Everything indeed is declining. The '* Guidecca," which is a capacious harbor has scarcely any vessels in it ; all commerce and business go to Trieste. The cit}^ is cut off fi'om the Milanese by custom-houses. People do not work ; dejection under- mines all effort as it undermines all pleasure ; the no- bles live immured on their estates ; many of the palaces have degenerated and some seem to be abandoned. Out of a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants there are forty thousand poor, thirty thousand of ^vhich hve on alms and are inscribed on the charity registers. I have seen the report of the podestat, Count Piero Luigi, for the last four years. Out of 780,000 florins exjiended, 10,000 went for instruction, 129,000 for benevolent purposes and 94,000 for public charity. I visited the hospital for the insane and I have its statistics ; tho jdlagrey'^ bad food and excessive poverty furnish the gi'eatest number of the demented. Taxes, it must be said, are overwhelming. I am told of a house having an income of 1,000 florins which pays a tax of 400 A podere, that is to say a piece of ground with a habi- tation on it, brings 1,130 francs and pays 500. Another house, at Venice, is let at 238 florins and pa3^s 64. In general a piece of real estate pays the third of its revenue. This big slice once devoured the fiscal teeth operate on another taxable piece. Besides imposts on successions, transmissions, food and others, besides those on rent and for the privilege of trading, there is a sort of income tax as in England. According to the merchant who furnishes me with these particulars this tax is a twentieth. A merchant pays the twentieth of liis estimated profits, an employe the twentieth of his Balary. It is the ^\'orse for him if at the end of * A local cutaneous disease. — Tr. -^^ VENICE. tlie year his gain proves less than he anticipated. It is still worse if it be nothing, and worse yet if he should make a loss. He is obliged to make his declaration in advance under oath. If he is convicted of having concealed any portion of his profits he pays a heavy penalty and, moreover, he is amenable to the penalty imposed on perjurers. Spies selected for the purpose speculate on his condition ; they calculate how much he expends per day, — so much for rent, so much for assistance and servants and so much for pro- visions; then, conjecturing what the profits may be according to the expenses, they control his declaration. This forms a sort of inquisition which discourages all industry. In this state of misery and inertia it is only the foreigners who have money, and all contend for them. Nowhere in Italy is living so cheap for the traveller ; a boat for an entire day costs five francs ; at the slightest nod the gondoliers rush forward ; they strive to get ahead of each other and beg you to take them by the week at a discount ; there is no city where a man of moderate means and an amateur of the beau- tiful could be better off in a pecuniary way and indulge his day-dreams ; it is only necessary to neglect politics. The Venetians, it is true, do not neglect them. On asking a peasant woman if the Austrians were liked in the country, she replied " We like them, but outside (Juori.'^) My poor old gondolier, on telliijg me of his poverty, added by way of consolation, " Gari- baldi will flo something." — It seems that everj'body here, even the Maj^or, an official magistrate, is a patriot. It is well known that in 1848 the people, armed with pieces of broken pavement, drove away the Austrian soldiers and fought with courageous obstinacy after the defeat of the Piedmontese at Novara. On the French squadron comiag in sight of the city during the late war the people became v/ild with excitement and, what is more, the excitement lasted. At the first PATEIOTIC FEELING. 259 shot from tlie fleet the revolt was to break out; the common people, the gondoliers, all were prepared. Several of them became insane on hearing of the armistice. Many emigrated and have since estab- lished themselves in Lombardy ; they could not get accustomed to the idea that Venice, which for so many years in Italy had escaped a foreign yoke, should alone remain in the hands of strangers : imagine five or six sisters in a family having become ladies and the last one and the most beautiful, the charming Cinderella, remaining a domestic. Whether domestic or lady she is to the traveller ever the most gracious and poetic of all ; in contemplating her one has to make an effort in order to think of graver matters, on the interests of politics ; Austrian or Italian she is a fairy. One would like to dwell here. What dreams six months would furnish ! What delight- ful promenades through art and history ! The library of San Marco contains a breviary which Hemling, the great painter of Bruges, has filled with his delicate figures. There are ephemerides by Sanudo in fifty- eight volumes, daily recorded and describing the man- ners and customs at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the brightest epoch of painting. Wliat a happy life, that of any historian, amateur of pictures, who might come here to study, to meditate, to write ! Glancing up from his page he would see on the ceiling of the Hbrary the " Adoration of the Magi" by Vero- nese, its figures fi'amed between two grand pieces of architecture, the noble white head and splendid figured robe of the first king, of his retinue, of all the charac- ters displayed, that white horse rearing in the hands of an amply draped attendant, the two angels over- head, the exquisite carnation of their nude limbs and the rare beauty of their ros^^ vestments seemingly dip- ped in magical light. One would readily appreciate the idea exhaling fi'om all this pomj:), that of a joyous, 260 VENICE. expansive, unrestraiued force, but ever noble, which swims in full prosperity and in full contentment. One would descend the marble staircases and leisurely enjoy luxuries which no monarch in Europe possesses. One would contemplate on a quay, in the shadow filled with watery reflections, some of the figures which for- merly supplied the great masters with theii^ personages, some blonde and ruddy gui with hair flying around liei brow and playing in careless flow ; the tanned and sombre visage and neck of some boatman under an old straw hat ; the great bulging nose, bright eyes and ample gray beard of some old fellow serving as a model for Titian's patriarchs; the white and somewhat fat neck, rosy cheeks, fine beaming eyes and waving tresses of some young girl tripping along and hfting her dress. One would feel the fertility and freedom of the geniuses who, from these slight, incomplete and scattered motives, derived so rich and so majestic a symphony. One would stray off to the Slaves' quay, to a little bench I know well, and there, in the cool shade, he would contemplate the marvellous expansion of sunlight, the sea still more glowing than the sky, the long smooth waves succeeding each other and bearing on their backs innumerable and tranquil sparkles, the light ripples, the quivering eddies beneath their golden scales ; and, farther on, the churches, the ruddy houses rising upward from the midst of polished glass, and that eternal, rustling, moving splendor which seems like one beautiful smile. One would push on to the public gardens to gaze on the remoter islands on the vague banks of sand and the opening sea. All is a plain here up to the horizon, a glittering plain trem- bling with flashes, and blue-green like a sombre tur- quoise. The eyes would always be virgmal to this sensation. They would never become satiated in ooking at these masses of piles strewing the azure with their black specks, these flat islets forming a deli- VENETIAN DELIGHTS. -^61 cate line below the sky on the verge of the sta, farther on a belfiy, the white spot of an illuminated house which at this distance seems no larger than the hand and here and there the ruby sail of a fisherman's bark returning homeward slowly impelled by the breeze. One would finish the day on the Square of San-Marco, between a sorbet and a bouquet of violets, listening to Bellini's or Yerdi's airs played by the wandering musicians. The eyes meanwhile would fix themselves on the firmament above the illuminated square seem- ingly a dome of black velvet incrusted with silver nails; they would follow the outline of the Basilica, white like a marble gem, displaying in the darkness its rounded bouquets of columns and its fretwork of statues. One would thus pass a year like an opium- smoker, and to good account, for, the only true way to endure life is to be insensible to it. CHAPTEK V. ma LATTER DAYS -EPICUREANISM.— CANALETTI, GUARDI, LONGHl GOLDONI AND LJOZZI.— THE CARNIVAL.— LICENSE.— THE LIDO.- THE SEA.— THE TOWER OF SAN-MARCO.— THE CITY, THE WATEF. AND THE SANDS. It is about in this fashion that the people in this country contrived to support their decadence. % This beautiful city ended, pagau-like, like its sisters the Greek republics, through nonchalance and voluptuousness. _. We find, indeed, from time to time, a Francis Morosini who, like Aratus and Philopoemen, renews the heroism and victories of ancient days ; but, after the seventeenth century, its bright career is over. The city, municipal and circumscribed, is found to be weak, like Athens and Corinth, against powerful military neighbors who either neglect or tolerate it ; the French and the Germans vio- late its neutrality with impunity ; it subsists and that is all, and it pretends to do no more. Its nobles care only to amuse themselves ; war and politics with them recede in the background ; she becomes gallant and world! With Palma the younger and Padovinano high art falls ; contours soften and become round ; inspiration and sen- timent diminish, stiffness and conventionalism are about to rule. Artists no longer know how to portray simple and vigorous bodies ; Tiepolo, the last of the ceiling decorators, is a mannerist seeking the melodramatic in his religious subjects and excitement and effect in his al- legorical subjects, purposely upsetting columns, over- throwing pyramids, rending clouds and scattering his figures in a way that gives to his scenes the aspect of a volcano in eruption. With him, Canaletti, Guardi and Longhi, begins another art, that of genre and landscapes LOVE OF PLEASURE. 263 The imagination declines ; they copy the petty scenes of actual life, and make pleasing views of surrounding edifices ; they imitate the dominos, the pretty faces and the coquettish and provoking airs of contemporary ladies. These are represented at their toilets, at their music-lessons and getting out of bed ; they paint charm- ing, languishing, smiling, arch and disdainful belles, genuine boudoir queens, whose small feet in satin shoes, pliant forms and delicate arms shrouded in laces fix the attention and secui'e the compliments of men. Taste grows refined and fastidious the same time that it be- comes insipid and circumscribed. ,/ But the evening of this fallen city is as mellow and as brilliant as a Vene- tian sunset. With the absence of care gaiety prevails. One encounters nothing but public and private fetes in the memoirs of their writers and in the pictures of their painters. At one time it is a pompous banquet in a superb saloon festooned with gold, with tall lustrous windows and pale crimson curtains, the doge in his simarre dining with the magistrates in purple robes, and masked guests gliding over the floor ; nothing is more elegant than the exquisite aristocracy of their small feet, their slender necks and their jaunty little three- cornered hats among skirts flounced with yellow or pearly gray silks. At another it is a regatta of gondo- las and we see on the sea between San-Marco and San- Giorgio, around the huge Bucentaur like a leviathan cuirassed with scales of gold, flotillas of boats partiug the water with their steel becks. A crowd of pretty dominos, male and female, flutter over the pavements ; the sea seems to be of polished slate under a tender azure sky spotted with cloud-flocks while all around, as in a precious frame, like a fantastic border carved and embroidered, the Procuraties, the domes, the palaces and the quays thronged with a joyous multitude, encir- cle the gi'eat maritime sheet. A company of seignors who are at Pavia with Goldoni, in order to return to ^64 VENICE. Venico, send for a large pleasure-barge covered with au awning, decked with paintings and sculpture and fur- nished with books and musical instruments ; there are ten masters and they travel onl^^ by day, leisurely and selecting good halting-places or, in default of these, lodging in the rich Benedictine monasteries. All play on some instrument, one on the violincello, three on the violin, two on the oboe, one on the hunting-horn and the other on the guitar. Goldoni, who alone is not a musi- cian, versifies the little occurrences of the voyage and recites them after the coffee. Every evening they as- cend on deck in order to give a concert, and the people on the two banks of the stream assemble in crowds wav- ing their handkerchiefs and applauding. On reaching Cremona they are welcomed with transports of joy ; the inhabitants honor them with a grand banquet ; the concert recommences, the local musicians join them and the night is given up to dancing. At each new evening halt there is the same festivity.* One cannot imagine a readier or more universal disposition for refined amuse- ments. Protestants like Misson, who chance to witness this kind of life, do not comprehend it and only make scandalous reports of it. The way of considering things there is as pagan as in the time of Polybius, for the rea- son that moral preoccupations and the germanic idea of duty could never take root there. In the days of the Reformation one writer already states that " there was never known to be one Yenetian belonging to the party of Luther, Calvin and the rest ; all follow the doctrines of Epicurus and of Cremonini his interpreter, the lead- ing professor of philosophy at Padua, which affirm that the soul is engendered like that of the brute animal through the virtue of its own seed and accordingly that it is mortal. . . . And among the partisans of this doc- trine are found the elite of the city, and in particular * Memoirs of Goldoni, Part I. Chap. XII. DEMORALIZATION. 266 those who take part in the government."- In truth they never concern themselves with religion except to repress the Pope ; in theory and in practic^e, in ideas and in instincts, tliey inherit the manners, customs and spirit of antiquity, and their Christianity is only a name. Like the ancients, they were at first heroes and artists, and then voluptuaries and diolettanti ; in one as in the other case they, like the ancients, confined life to the present. In the eighteenth century they might be com- pared to the Thebans of the decadence who, leagued together to consume their property in common, be- queathed what remained of their fortunes on dying to the survivors at their banquets. The carnival lasts six months; everybody, even the priests, the guardian of the capucins, the nuncio, little children, all who frequent the markets, wear masks. People pass by in proces- sions disguised in the costumes of Frenchmen, lawyers, gondoliers, Calabrians and Spanish soldiery, dancing and with musical instruments ; the crowd follows jeering or applauding them. There is entire liberty ; prince or artisan, all are equal ; each may apostrophize a mask. PjTamids of men form "pictures of strength" on the public squares ; harlequins in the open air perform j)a- rades. Seven theatres are open. Improvisators declaim and comedians improvise amusing scenes. " There is no city where license has such sovereign rule."t Pres- ident De Brosses counts here twice as many courtezans as at Paris, all of charming sweetness and pohteness and some of the highest tone. "During the carnival there are under the Procuratie arcade as many women recHning as there are standing. Lately five hundred courtiers of love have been arrested." Judge of the * Discorso Aristocratico, quoted by Darn, Vol. IV. p. 171. f See the pictures of the Carnival l)y Tiepolo, the Memoirs of Gozzi, Goldoni and Casanova, the ti'avels of President De Brosses, and especially the four German volumes of Maier, 1795 ; — in the sc reu leenth century, Amelol de la Honssaye, Saiut-Didier, etc. 266 VENICE. traffic. Opinion favors it ; a noble lias his mistress come for him in a gondola on leaving the church of San-Mar- co ; a Procurator in a dressing-gown stands at his win- dow and publicly interchanges amorous signals with a well-known courtezan residing opposite to him. " A husband does not scruple to state in his own house that he is going to dine with his mistress and his wife sends there whatever he orders." On the other hand wives compensate themselves ; whatever they do is tolerated. " E donna maritata,'^ excuses everything. " It would be a kind of dishonor for a wife not to be in public rela- tionship with some man." The husband never accom- panies her — it would be ridiculous ; he permits a sigisbe to do so in his place. Sometimes this substitute is de- signated in the marriage contract ; he visits the lady in the morning when she arises, takes chocolate with her, assists at her toilet accompanies her everywhere and is her servant ; frequently, when very noble, she has five or six, and the spectacle is curious to see her at the churches giving her arm to one, her handkerchief to another and her gloves or mantle to another. The fash- ion prevails in the convents. " Every charming young nun has her attendant cavalier." Most of these recluses are immured by force and they insist on living like wo- men of the world. They are fascinating with "their crisp, curly hair, white gauze kerchief projecting over their brow, white camlet frock and flowers placed on their open breast." They receive any one they please and send their friends sugar-plums and bouquets ; dur- ing the carnival they disguise themselves as ladies and even as men, and thus enter the parlor and invite masked courtezans there. They go out of doors and in the work of that scapegrace Casanova we may see for what purpose. De Brosses states that on his arrival intrigues between the convents were active in order to decide •' which should have the honor of giving a mistress to the new nuncio." In truth there is no longer any family STATE OF THE FAMILT. 267 life. After tlie seventeenth century men say that *' marriage is purely a civil ceremony which binds opin- ion and not conscience." Of several brothers one alone, ordinarily, marries ; the embarrassment of perpetuat- ing the family falls on him ; the others often live under the same roof with him and are the sigisbes of his wife. Three or four combine together to support a mistress in common. The poor traffic with their daughters quite young. " Out of ten who are abandoned" Saint-Didier already states, " there are nine whose mothers and aunts themselves negotiate the bargain." Thereupon follow some details which one would suppose to be taken from the oriental bazaars. With the dissolution of the fam- ily comes the abandonment of the domestic hearth. There is no visiting ; people meet each other at public or private casinos, of which some are for ladies and some for men. There are no home comforts ; a palace is a museum, a family memorial, only a resting-place for the night. " The Foscarini palace contains two hun- dred rooms filled with wealth, but not one chamber or chah offering a seat on account of the delicate carvings." Domestic authority has disappeared. " Parents dress their children ostentatiously as soon as they can walk." Boys of five or six years of age are seen wearing black hooded sacques trimmed with lace and figured with sil- ver and gold. They are spoiled to excess ; the father dares not scold them. When they get to be seventeen or eighteen he gives them mistresses ; a Procurator, grieving at the loss of the company of a son who passes his time with a courtezan goes and beseeches him to bring her home with him. This demorahzation extends from manners to dress ; people are seen attending mass or frequenting the public squares in slippers and in dressing-gowns under their black cloaks. Many of the indigent nobles live as parasites at the expense of the coffee-house keepers, of whom they are the pest. Oth- ers half-ruined, pass most of the day in bed, their feci 268 VENICE. protruding tlirongli tattered sheets, and the abbe of thf house, meanwhile, composing for them licentious stories. In this corruption, following upon the death of militant virtues, only one living trait subsists, the love of beauty. Delicate, spirituelle painting of landscape and of genre flourishes up to the last. Music is born and soon passe\i from the church to the theatre. Four hospitals of aban- doned young girls furnish so many seminaries of musi- cians and of incomparable singers. Almost ever}^ even- ing, there is on the banks of the Grand Canal an " acad- emy" with music, and "with an inconceivable gather- ing," of people who crowd to it in gondolas and along the quays in order to enjoy it. At the theatre the light capricious fancy of Gozzi throws over their misery a diaphanous tissue of golden reveries and diverting gro- tesques. Noble races are beautiful even in ruin ; the poetic imagination which illuminated the vigorous years of their youth accompanies them even to the brink of the grave in order to warm and to color their last mo- ments, and this privilege saves their decrepitude as well as their adult age from the only two unpardonable vices, bitterness and vulgarity. The Lido. — One can do nothing here but dream. And yet dream is not the proper word since it simply denotes a wandering of the brain, a coming and going of vague ideas ; if one dreams at Yenice it is through sensations and not through ideas. For the hundredth time to-day I have remarked, looking west, the peculiar color of the water in the vicinity of the sand-bank? consisting of the dun tints of Florentine bronze crawl ing with sinuous gleams of light. The sunset glow is depicted on it and is there transformed into tones of reddish or greenish orange. Occasionally the tint be- comes auroral like silk drapery inflated and tossed by a current of air. Beyond, the infinite and imperceptible motion of the great blue surface mingles, unites and ex- tends betweei sky and sea a network of radiant white- THE LIDO. 2G9 ness ; the boat swims in light ; only around it is seen the mingled green and azure, always changing, always the same. In an hour we reach the Lido, a long bank of sand protecting Venice from the open sea. In the middle is a church with a village and, around it, gardens pali- saded with straw and filled wdth young fi^uit-trees, all in full bloom. On the left nms an avenue of older trees, revived, however, with the earl}' spring ; their round tops are already white like bridal bouquets. On advancing a hundred yards the broad sea appears, no longer motionless and converted into a lake as at Ven- ice but wild and roaring with the eternal resonance of its flux and reflux and the dash of its foaming surge. No one is visible on this long sandy bar ; the most one sees at intervals, on turning an angle, is the gi'ay capoto of a sentinel. No human sound. I walk along in silence and gradually find myself enveloped in the grand monotonous voice of nature; each step is im- printed on the wet sand ; the shells crackle under the crushing feet ; hundreds of little crabs run away obliquely and wdien caught by the wave seek refuge in the ground. Meanwhile night comes on, and in fi^ont to the east, all grows dark. In the deepening obscurity two or three white sails are still discernible ; these disap- pear ; the green tones of the water become darker and darker until drowned in the universal night ; from time to time a single wave breaks its snowy crest and falls with a feeble tremor upon the beach. On all sides, like the dull clamor of distant hounds, rises a hoarse and infinite roar wdiich in the absence of other sensations, menaces the soul with its threats, reviving the idea, lost at Venice, of the indomitable and malevo- lent power of the sea. On returning, and toward sunset, the sky seems like a brasier, and the rampart of houses, towers and churches rays the ruddy glow^ with opaque blackness 270 VENICE. It is actually the image of a vast conflagration, like those occurring in the upheavals of the globe wher eruptions of lava have buried the vegetation of ages. It seems to be a furnace let loose and flaming yonder out of sight, and yet throwing up volleys of sparks in sight with the sombre scarlet of still blazing trunks and of the smothered and deadened brands amassed by the crumbling and crash of mighty forests. Their funer(>al shadows lengthen out infinitely on the ruddy waves and vanish in the night already covering the heaving sea with its pall. Ajjril 29. — I promised to wTite you something about Venetian painting, and yet day after day I defer it. There are too many great works, and the work is too original ; one experiences here too many emotions and lives too bountifully and too fast ; it is like living in a green and primitive forest ; it is much easier to sit down and gaze than to seek for a path and embrace the whole ; you resign yourself and grow indolent, and are always repeating that this or that must be seen over and over again. You are at last wearied out body and soul and say to yourself, to-morrow. The next day a fresh idea comes — for example, this morning at daj^break I ascended the tower of San-Marco. From the top of this tovvxr you see Yenice and the entire lagune ; at this height man's works never seem to be more than those of beavers ; nature reappears, just as she is, sole subsistent, vast, scarcely defaced or spotted here and there with our petty ephemeral life. All is sand and sea ; only one grand flat plane is visible barred to the north by a wall of snow-peaks, a sort of intermediary domain between the dry and the fluid element, an infecund territory varied by neutral sands and lustrous pools. Eed islets, washed by the falling tide, send forth vague slaty reflections. All around are tortuous canals and motionless surfaces mingling jhe infinite confusion of their shapes and the metallic VIETT FPiOM SAN- MARCO. 271 niellos of their leaden waters. It is a desert, a strange dead desert. Tiiere is no life save a flotilla of boats returning to port and oscillating beneath their orange sails. From time to time, beyond the Lido, a jet of sun- shine piercing the clouds casts on the broad sea a bril- liant ray like a flashing sword severing a sombre mantle. One may remain here for hours, indifferent to all human interests, before the uniform dialogue of two grand objects, the concave sky and the flat earth, occu- pying space and the field of being. Between two troops of blonde clouds rushes a breath of sea-air. They pass in turn before the thin crescent moon which indefat- igably buries her blade in their mass like a scythe in a field of ripened grain. BOOK VI. VENETIAN ART. CHAPTEE I. CLIMATE.— TEMPERAMENT.— ART, AN ABSTRACT OP LIFE.— MA?^ IN THE INTERVAL BETWEEN HEROIC AND DEGENERATE ERAS. April 30, 1864.- — I find it more difficult to speak of Venetian painters than of any others. Before their pictures one has no disposition to analyze and discuss ; if it is done it is an effort. The ej^es enjoy and that is all ; they enjoy the same as those of the Venetians of the sixteenth century ; for Venice was not a literary or critical city like Florence, painting there being simply the complement of surrounding voluptuousness, the decoration of a banquet-hall or of an architectural alcove. In order to explain this to himself a man must withdraw to a distance and close his eyes, and wait until his sensations become subdued ; the mind then does its office. Here are three or four prelim- inary ideas ; on such a subject a man divines and sketches but does not perfect. Venice is not only a distinct city differing from other cities in Italy, free from the beginning and for thirteen hundred years, but again a distinct community differing from all others, having a soil, a sky, a climate, and an atmosphere of its own. Compared with Florence, which is the other centre, it is an aquatic world by the side of a terrestrial world. Man here has not the same- field of vision. Instead of clear contours, sober tones and motionless planes the eye ever finds, in the firs* ATMOSPHERIC PECULIARITIES. 273 place, a moving and brilliant surface, a varied and uni- form refiection of light, an exquisite union of varied and melting tones prolonged without fixed limit into those in contact with them ; and then a soft vapory haze due to an incessant evaporation from the water enveloping all forms, rendering distances blue and filling the sky with magnificent clouds ; again the contrast Avhicli the hard, intense and lustrous color of the water ever}"- where opposes to the subdued and stony hue of the edifices it bathes. In a dry country the eye is im- pressed by the line, in a w^et one by the spot. This is very evident in Holland and in Flanders. The eye there is not arrested by delicacies of contour half- blurred by the intermediate moist atmosphere ; it fixes itself on harmonies of color enlivened by the universal fi'eshness and graduated by the variable density of am- bient vapor. In the same way at Venice, and, save the diiferences which separate this sea-green element and these empurpled sands from the dingy mire and sooty sky. of Amsterdam or of Antwerp, the eye, as at Antwerp and Amsterdam, becomes colorist. Proof of this may be found in the .early architecture of the Venetians, in these stripes of porphyry, serpentine and precious marbles incrusting their palaces ; in the som- bre purple starred Avith gold filling San-Marco; in their original and persistent taste for the lustrous tints and luminous embroideries of mosaic and in the vivacity and brilliancy of their oldest national paintings. Vivarini, Carpaccio and Crivelli, and later John Bellini, already announce the splendor of the coming masters. These almost always used oil, finding fresco too dull ; and Vasari like a true Florentine, reproaches Titian for painting " immediately fi'om nature and not making a preparatory design, imagining that the only and best way to obtain a good design is to use color at once without pre^aously studying contours with a pencil on paper." 8T4 VENETIAN ART. A second reason and a stronger one is that besides the surroundings of a man the climate modifies his temperament and his instincts. Physiologists have only glanced at this truth, but it is plain to all who travel.^ The living body is a condensed, organized gas, plunged into the atmosphere and constantly v^^asting and renewing itself, in such a way that man forms a portion of his milieu incessantly renewed by his milieu. According to the greater or less difficulty or rapidity of the escape or absorption of the entire machine so is its tension and its activity different ; cerebral opera- tions, like the rest, depend on the ease and the ra- pidity of the current of which, like the rest, they form a wave. A northern man, for instance, absorbs and wastes two or three times as much as a southern man, and consequently his sensibility, that is to say the sud- denness and vehemence of his emotions, are two or three times less great. Compare a peasant or a horse of Friesland in Holland with a peasant or a horse of Berri in France ; a Lombard Italian with a Calabrian Italian and a Russian with an Arab.t We are as yet ignorant of the precise laws which apportion to the colder or moister atmosphere, alimentation, respira- tion, muscular force, capacity for emotion and genera- tion of diverse orders of ideas ; but it is plain that such laws exist. Everywhere, and powerfully, climate, physical temperament and moral structure interdepend Uke three successive links of a chain ; whoever dis- turbs the first, disturbs the second and, consequently, * Experiments have been made with a view to ascertain the effect of a carnivorous diet. French workmen performing half as much labor as English workmen were fed on meat ; at the end of a yeai their capacity for labor, that is to say, their powers of attention and their muscular energy, had doubled. f The Duke of Wellington says : "When a French army has the necessary, i Spanish army has too much and the English army is iying with hunger." VENETIAN SENSUOUSNESb. -'■' the third. Venice and the valley of the Po aie the Netherlands of Italy ; hence it is that temperament and character are here transformed as they are in the Netherlands of the north. We find here, the same as in Flanders, bright rosy carnations, blonde and red hair, soft, pulpy and slightly flabby flesh in contrast with the black hair, energetic spareness, noble sculptural features and firm muscles of the Italians of central Italy. We find here as in Flanders, a passionate fondness for sensuous enjoyment, exquisite appreciation of material resources, and an inferior Hterary or spec- ulative spirit, forming a contrast to the subtle, argumen- tative, delicate intellect tending to purism, running through all the lives and writings of the Florentines."^ In the beginning, architecture so gay and so httle clas- sic, voluptuous tastes after the fifteenth century,t later, a publicity of pleasure,- the six months carnival and registered and innumerable courtezans, music a state institution, at all times magnificence of costumes and of festivals, pompous, variegated dalmatics, em- broidered silk robes, a prodigality of gold and dia- monds, constant contact with oriental magnificence and fancy, fixed toleration in religious matters and allow- able indifference in political matters, exuberant pros- perity, voluptuousness encouraged, supineness pro- scribed, all announce the same primitive and leading disposition, that is to say an aptitude for imbuing sensual life with poesy and a talent for combining enjoyment with beauty. It is this national naturalness which the painters represent in their types ; this it is "which they flatter in their coloring ; its effects and surroundings are displayed by them in their silks, * The ri''>rentines called the Venetians grossolani. f Antonella da Messina, says Vasari, went to reside in Venice, in which city he introduced oil-paiiiting-. fie preferred this city and was much esteemed and caressed by the nobles^ "being a persor. much addicted to pleasure and licentiousness."' 276 VENETIAN AET. velvets and pearls, in their balnstrades, their colon- nades and their gildings. It is more clearly seen in them than in itself. They have disengaged, defined and incorporated it in a visible shape. Great artists. everywhere, are the heralds and interpreters of their community ; Jordsens, Grayer, Kubens in Flanders and Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese in Yenice. Their in stinct and their intuition make them naturalists, psy- chologists, historians and philosophers ; they ruminate over the idea constituting their race and theii epoch, and the broad and involuntary sympathy forming their genius brings together and organizes in their minds in true proportions the infinite and commingled elements of the society in which they are comprised. Their tact goes farther than science, and the ideal being they fetch to light is the most powerful summary, the live- liest concentrated image, the most complete and defi- nite figure of the real beings amongst whom they have dwelt. They again seize the mould in which nature has cast her objects and which, charged with a refrac- tory metal, has only furnished rude and defective forms ; they empty it and pour their metal into it, a more supple metal, and they heat their own furnace, and the statue that issues from the clay in their hands represents for the first time the veritable contours of a mould which preceding castings, crusted with scoria and traversed with fissures, could not express. Let us now consider the moment of their appearance. In all times and in every land that which inspires works of art is a certain complex and mixed condition of things encountered in the soul when placed between two orders of sentiments : it is in train to abandon the love of the grand for the love of the agreeable ; but in passing from one to the other it combines both. It is necessary still to possess the taste for the grand, that is to say, for noble forms and vigorous passions, without which works of art would be only pretty. It is neces- ANCIENT HEROISM. 377 sary to liave already possessed a taste for the agreeable, that is to say, a craving for pleasure and interest in decoration, without which the mind would concern itself only with actions and never delight in works of art. Hence the transient and precious flower is only seen to bloom at the confluence of two epochs, be- twixt heroic and epicurean habits, at the moment when man, terminating some long and painful war, or foundation, or discovery, begins to take repose and look about him, meditating over the pleasure of decorating his great bare tenement whose foundations his own hands have laid and whose walls they have erected. Before this it would have been too soon ; absorbed with labor he could not think of enjoyment ; a little time after it would be too late, as, dreaming of enjoyment only, he no longer conceives of an effort. Between the two is found the unique moment, lasting longer or shorter according as the transformation of the soul is more or less prompt, and in which, men, still strong, impetuous and capable of sublime emotion and of bold enterprise, suffer the tension of their will to relax in order to magnificently enliven the senses and the in- tellect. Such is the change effected in Yenice, as in the rest of Italy, between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Chiogga campaign is the last act of the old heroic drama ; there, as in the best days of the ancient repub- lics a besieged people is seen to save itself against all hope, artisans equipping vessels, a Pisani conqueror undergoing imprisonment and only released to renew the victory, a Carlo Zeno^ surviving forty wounds, and a doge of seventy years of age ; a Contarini, who makes a vow not to leave his vessel so long as the enemy's fleet is uncaptured, thirty families, apothecaries, grocers, vintners, tanners admitted among the nobles, a bravery, •^ He died in 1418. He ived the life of one of Plutarch's characters 278 VEIsETIAN ART. a public spirit like that of Athens under Themistoclea and of Kome under Fabius Cunctator. If, from this time forth, the inward fire abates we still feel its warmth for many long years, longer kept up than in the rest of Italy, and sometimes demonstrating its power by sud- den outbursts. ; Yenice is always an independent city, a cherished soil when Florence, Eome and Bologna are nothing more than museums for the idle and for ama- teurs. A subjected people are still found to be citizens on occasion ; on Louis XII. and Maximilian becoming masters of the Venetian possessions on the mainland the peasants rebel in the name of St. Mark and the volunteers, in spite of the doge, retake Padua. On Pope Paul V. attempting to impose his will on Venice the Venetian clergy remain patriotic and the people hoot away the papalistic monks."^ On the spreading of the ecclesiastic inquisition over Italy the Venetian sen- ate causes Paolo Sarpi to write against the Council of Trent, tolerates on its soil protestants, Arminians, Ma- hometans, Jews, and Greeks, leaves them in possession of their temples and permits the interment of heretics in the churches. The nobles, on their side, are always ready to fight. During the whole of the sixteenth cen- tury, even up to the seventeenth and beyond, we see them in Dalmatia, in the Morea, over the entire Medi- terranean, defending the soil inch by inch against the infidels. The garrison of Famagouste yields only to faminet and its governor, Bragadino, burnt alive, is a hero of ancient days. At the battle of Lepanto the Venetians alone furnish one half of the christian fleet. Thus on all sides, and notwithstanding their gradual decline, peril, energy, love of country, all, in brief, which constitutes or sustains the grand life of the soul here subsists, whilst throughout the peninsula foreign dominion, clerical oppression and voluptuous or aca- * " Siamo Veneziani e poi cristiani." f 1571. DECLINE OF THE REPUBLIC. 37B demical inertia reduces man to tlie system of the antechamber, the subtleties of dilettantism and the babble of sonnets. But if the human spring is not broken at Venice, it is seen insensibly losing its elasticity. The govern- ment, changed into a suspicious despotism, elects a Mocenigo doge, a shameless speculator profiting on the public distress, instead of that Charles Zeno who had saved the country ; it holds Zeno prisoner two years and intmsts the armies on the mainland to condottieri ; it is tied up in the hands of three inquisitors, provokes accusations, practices secret executions and commands the people to confine themselves to the indulgences of pleasure. On the other hand luxury arises. About the year 1400 the houses "were quite small;" but a thousand nobles were enumerated in Venice possessing from four to seventy thousand ducats rental, while three thousand ducats were sufficient to purchase a palace. Henceforth this great wealth is no longer to bo employed in enterprises and in self-devotion, but in pomp and magnificence. In 1495 Commines admires " the grand canal, the most beautiful street I think, in the world, and with the best houses ; the houses are veiy grand, high and of excellent stone, — and these have been built within a century. All have fronts of white marble, which comes from Istria a hundred miles away, and yet many more great pieces of porphyry and of serpentine on them : inside they have, most of them, at least two chambers with gilded ceilings, rich ivoreeiis of chimneys with carved marble, the bedsteads gilded and the ostevents painted and gilded and well furnished within." On his arrival twenty-five gentlemen attired in silk and scarlet come to meet him ; they conduct him to a boat decked with crimson silk; "it is the most triumphant cit}^ that I ever saw." Finally, whilst the necessity of pleasure grows the spmt ol enterprise diminishes ; the passage of the Cape in the beginning 280 VENETIAN ABT. of the sixteenth century places the commerce of Asia in the hands of the Portuguese ; on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic the financial measures of Charles T. joined to bad usage by the Turks, render abortive the great maritime caravans which the state dispatches yearly between Alexandria and Bruges. In respect to industrial matters, the hampered artisans, watched and cloistered in their country, cease to perfect their arts and allow foreign competitors to surpass them in pro- cesses and in furnishing supplies to the world. Thus, on all sides, the capacity for activity becomes lessened and the desire for enjoyment greater without one entirely effacing the other, but in such a way that, both commingling, they produce that ambiguous state of mind similar to a mixed temperature which is neither too mild nor too severe and in which the arts are generated. Indeed, it is from 1454 to 1572, between the institution of state inquisitors and the battle of Lepanto, between the accomplishment of internal des- potism and the last of the great outward victories, that the brilliant productions of Yenetian art appear. John Bellini was born in 1426, Giorgone died in 1511, Titian in 1576, Veronese in 1572 and Tintoretto in 1594. In this interval of one hundred and fifty years this warrior city, this mistress of the Mediterranean, this queen of commerce and of industry became a casino for masqueraders and a den of courtezans. CHAPTER II. THE EARLY PAINTERS.— JOHN BELLINI.— CARPACCTO.— VENETIAN SO^ CIETY IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.— UNRESTRAINED VOLUPTU OUSNESS.— DOTklESTIC ESTABLISHMENT OF ARETINO.— SENTLMENT OP ART.— COLOR INSTINCTS. The Academy of the Fine Arts contains a collection \ of tlie works of the earliest painters. A large picture in compartments, of 1380, quite barbarous, shows the first steps taken : here, as elsewhere, the new art issued from Byzantine traditions. It appears late, much later than in precocious and intelligent Tuscany. We encounter, indeed, in the fourteenth century, a Semit- ecolo, a Guariento, weak disciples of the school which Giotto founded at Padua ; but, in order to find the first national painters, we must come down to the middle of the following century. At this time there lived at ■/ Murano a famil}^ of artists called the Yivarini. With \ the oldest of these, Antonio, we already detect the j rudiments of Venetian taste, some venerable beards and bald heads, fine draperies with rosy and green tones, little angels almost plump and Madonnas with full cheeks. After him his brother Bartolomeo, edu- cated undoubtedly in the Paduan school, inclines paint- ing for a time to dry and bony forms."^ With him, how- ever, as with all the rest, a feeling for rich colors is already perceptible. On leaving this antechamber of art the eyes keep a full and strong sensation which other vestibules of art, at Sienna and at Florence, do not give, and, on continuing, we find the same sensa- tion, still richer, before the masters of this half-legible era, John Bellini and Carpaccio. * A Yirgin of 1 l?,^, at Santa Maria Fonnosa. 282 VENETIAN ART. I have just examined at the Frari a picture by Johri Bellini which, like those of Perugino, seems to me a masterpiece of genuine religious art. At the rear of a chapel, over the altar, within a small piece of golcler architecture, sits the Virgin on a throne in a grand blue mantle. She is good and simple like a simple, in- nocent peasant girl. At her feet two little angels in short vests seem to be choir-boys and their plump infantile thighs are of the finest and healthiest flesh- color. On the two sides, in the compartments, are two couples of saints, impassible figures in the garbs of monk and bishop, erect for eternity in hieratic attitude, actual forms reminding one of the sunburnt fisher- men of the Adriatic. These personages have all lived ; the believer kneeling before them recognized features encountered by him in his boat and on the canals, the ruddy brown tones of visages tanned by the sea-breezes, the broad and pure carnation of young girls reared in a moist atmosphere, the damask cope of the prelate heading the processions, and the little naked legs of the children fishing for crabs at sunset. He could not avoid having faith in them ; truth so local and perfect paved the way to illusion. But the apparition was one of a superior and august world. These personages do not move ; their faces are in repose and their eyes fixed like those of figures seen in a dream. A painted niche, decked with red and gold, recedes back of the Virgin like the extension of an imaginary realm ; painted architecture in this way imitates and completes actual architecture, while the golden Host on the marble, crowned with rays and a glory, displays the entrance into the supernatural world disclosing itself behind her On regarding other pictures by John Bellini, and those of his contemporaries in the Academy, it is evi- dent that painting in Venice, while following a path of its own, ran the same course as in the rest of Italy. It issues here, as elsewhere, from missals and mosaics CARPACCIO. and corresponds at first wliolly to cliristian emotions ; then, by degrees, the sentiment of a beautiful corporeal life introduces into the altar-frames vigorous and healthy bodies borrowed from smTounding nature, and we wcm- der at seeing placid expressions and religious physiogno- mies on flourishing forms circulating with yonthful blood and sustained by an intact temperament. It is the con fluence of two ages and of two spirits, one christian and subsiding and the other pagan and about to become ascendant. At Venice, however, over these general resemblances special traits are delineated. The per- sonages are more closely copied from life, less trans- formed by the classic or mystic sentiment, less pure than at Perugia, less noble than at Florence ; they appeal less to the intellect or to the heart and more to the senses. They are more quickly recognized as men, and give greater pleasure to the eye. Powerful, lively tones color their muscles and faces ; living flesh is already soft on the shoulders, and on children's thighs ; open landscapes recede in order to enforce the dark tints of the figures ; the saints gather around the Vir- gin in various attitudes unknown to the monotonous perceptions of other primitive schools. At the height of its fervor and faith the national spirit, fond of diversity and the agi'eeable allows a smile to glimmer. Nothing is more striking in this respect than the eight figures by Carpaccio relating to St. Ursula. * Everything is here ; and first the awkwardness of the feudal image- fabricator. He ignores one half of the landscape, and likewise the nude : his rocks bristling with trees, seem to issue from a psalter ; frequently his trees are as if cut out of polished sheet-iron ; his ten thousand crucified martyrs on a mountaiii are grotesque like the figures of an ancient mystery ; he did not, evidently, live in Flor- ence, nor study natural objects with Paolo Uccello, noi * Pictures of from 1490 to 1515. 284 VENETIAN ART. human members and muscles with Pollaiolo. On the other hand we find in him the chastest of mediaeval figures, and that extreme finish, that perfect truthful- ness, that bloom of the christian conscience which the following age, more rude and sensual, is to trample on in its vehemences. The saint and her aj0&anced, under their great drooping blonde tresses, are grave and tender, like the characters of a legend. We see her, at one time asleep and receiving from the angel the announcement of her martyrdom, now kneeling with her spouse under the benediction of the pope, now translated in glory above a field of crowded heads. In another picture she appears with St. Anne and two aged saints embracing each other ; one cannot imagine figures more pious and more serene ; she, pale and gentle, her head slightly bent, holds a banner in her beautiful hands and a green palm-branch; her silky hair flows down over the virginal blue of her long robe and a royal mantle envelops her form with its golden confusion ; she is indeed a saint, the candor, humility and delicacy of the middle ages entirely permeating her attitude and expression. Such is the age, and such the country ! These paintings provide scenes of social significance and rich decorations. The artist, as at a later period his great successors, displays architecture, fabrics, arcades, tapestried halls, vessels, processions of characters, grand bedizened and lustrous robes, all in petty proportions but in brilliancy and in diversity anticipating future productions as an illuminated man- uscript anticipates a picture. And in order fully to show the transformation under way he himself once attains to perfect art ; we see him emerging from his primitive dryness in order to enter on the new and de- finitive style. In the middle of the grand hall is a " Pre sentation of the boy Jesus" which one would not be- lieve to be by him, were it not signed by his hand (1510). Under a marble portico incrusted with mosaics of gold PATRICIAN SENTIMENT. 285 appear personages almost of the size of life, in admirable relief, exquisitely finished, and perfect in composition and amidst the most beautiful gradations of light and shadow ; the Virgin, followed by two young females, leads her child to the aged Simeon ; beneath, three angels play on the viol and the lute. Save a little rigidity in the heads of the men, and in some of the folds of the drapery, the archaic manner has disap- peared ; nothing remains of it but the infinite charm of moral refinement and benignity, while, for the first time, the semi-nude bodies of little children show the beauty of flesh traversed and impregnated with light. With this picture we cross the threshold of high art, and, around Carpaccio, his young contem- poraries, Giorgone and Titian, have already surpassed him. The Masters. — When, in order to comprehend the milieu in which an art has flourished, we strive, accord- ing to the documents at hand, to form some idea of the life of a patrician at Venice during the first half of the sixteenth century, we encounter in iiim first, and in the foremost rank, a spirit of haughty security and gi^an- deur. He regards himself as the successor of the ancient Romans, and holds that, except in conquests, he has surpassed, and does still surpass them." " Among all the provinces of the noble Roman empire Italy is queen," and in the Italy overcome by the C?esars, and devastated by the barbarians, Venice is the sole city that remained free. Abroad she has just recovered the provinces on the mainland wrested fi-om her by Louis XII. Her lagunes and her alliances pro- tect her against the emperor. The Turk fails in his encroachments on her domain, and Candia, Cyprus, the Cyclades, Corfu and the coasts of the Adriatic held by her garrisons, extend her sovereignty to the extremities * Douati GianoUi. Tal liepvhlica di Venezia (dialogues'). ^86 VENETIAN AET. of the sea. Within, " she has never been more perfect." In no state in the world do we see " better laws, bettei preservation of order, more complete concord," and in this admirable system, which is unique in the uni- verse, "she does not lack valorous and magnanimous souls." With the dignified coolness of a grand seignor, Marco Trifone Gabriello regards the prosperity of the glorious city as due to its aristocratic government, and " the suppression of the council developed it up to a point of grandeur not previously reached." According to him all citizens excluded from suffrage are only inferior people, boatmen, subjects and domestics. If, in the course of events, any of these become wealthy and prominent it is due to the tolerance of the state which gathers them under its wing ; still, in this day they are protected, they have no rights; clients and plebeians they rejoice in the patronage awarded to them. The sole legitimate rulers are " three thousand gentlemen, seigneurs of the city and of the entire state on land and on sea." The state belongs to them ; " as formerly with the Roman patricians they hold public affairs in fee, and the wisdom of their rule confirms the stability of their right." Thereupon the " magnifico" describes with patriotic complacency the economy of Ae constitution and the resources of the city, the order of the functions and the election of magistrates, the fifteen hundred thousand crowns of public revenue, the new fortifications on land and the armament in tho arsenals. In gravity, proud spiritedness and nobleness of discourse one might take him for a citizen of anti- quity. In fact his friends compare him to Atticus ; he, however, courteously declines the title, declaring that if, like Atticus, he has withdrawn from public affairs it is for a different motive and wholly creditable to his city, since the retirement of Atticus was excused by the powerlessness of worthy citizens and the decline Df Rome, whereas his own is authorized by the su ARETINO. 287 perabundanco of capable men and the prosperity of Venice. Thus does the dialogue proceed in terms of noble courteousness, in tine periods and with sub- stantial arguments ; the apartment of Bembo at Padua is the theatre for this, and the reader may im - agine these lofty Renaissance halls, decorated with busts, manuscripts and vases, in which the grandeurs of paganism and of antique patriotism reappeared with the eloquence, the purity and the urbanity of Cicero. How do our " magnifici" amuse themselves ? Some of them are serious I can readily believe, but the pre- vailing sentiment at Venice is not a rigid one. At tliis time the most prominent personage is Aretino, the son of a courtezan, bom in a hospital, parasite by profession, and a professor of black-mail, who, by means of calumnies and sycophancies, of luxurious sonnets and obscene dialogues, becomes the arbiter of reputations, extorts seventy thousand crowns from European magnates, calls himself "the scourge of princes" and succeeds in passing off his inflated effemi- nate stvle as one of the marvels of the human intellect. ft/ He has no property and lives like a seignor on the money bestowed, or on the presents showered, on him. At early morning, in his palace on the Grand Canal, solicitors and flatterers fill his antechamber. " So many seignors,"- he says, "importune me with their visits that my stairs are worn with the friction of their feet like the Capitol pavement with the wheels of triumphant chariots. I doubt if Eome ever saw so great a medley of nations and languages as that which is visible under my roof. Turks, Jews, Indians, Frenchmen, Spaniards and Germans, all resort to it. As to the Italians imagine how many there must be ! I say nothing of the vulgar ; it is impossible to tind me * Leltre, Vol. T. j\ ?0.> He camo to "^-^euice in 1537. 2B8 VENETIAN ART. free of monks and priests .... I am secretary foi everybody." Nobles, prelates and artists pay court tc him ; tliey fetch him antique medals, gold collars, velvet mantles, pictures, purses of five hundred crowns and the diplomas of Academies. His bust of white marble, his portrait by Titian, the medals of bronze, silver and gold that represent him display to the gaze of his visitors his brutal and impudent mask. We see him on these crowned, clad in long imperial robes, sit- ting on an elevated throne and receiving the homage and gifts of the surrounding people. He is popular and sets the fashion. " I see," he says, " my effigy on the facades of palaces ; I encounter it again on comb- boxes, on mirror ornaments, on majolica ware like thai of Alexander, Csesar or Scipio. Moreover I assure you that at Murano there is a certain kind of crystal vase called an Aretino. A breed of horses is called Aretino, in commemoration of one I received from Pope Clement and which I gave to Duke Frederick. The stream bathing one side of the house which I occupy on the Grand Canal is baptized with the name of Aretino. People refer to the style of Aretino, — how the pedants burst with vexation ! Three of my cham- bermaids or housekeepers, having left my service to set up for ladies, call themselves Aretines." Thus protected and fed by public favor he enjoys himself, not furtively and delicately, but openly and ostenta- tiously. " Let us eat, drink and be merry, and .... like liberal men!" I am a liberal man, says he often, Avhich signifies that he does what he pleases and pam- pers all his senses. At this epoch the nerves are still rude and the muscles vigorous ; only toward the end of the seventeenth century does society incline to insi- pidity and roguery. At this time all desires are gluttonous rather than dainty ; in the Yenuses which the great masters undrape on their canvases the torse AliETINO. 28! is masculine and the eye audacious ; voluptuousnesSj rank and open, leaves no place for polisli or for senti- mentality. Aretino liad been a vagabond and soldier, and his pleasures smacked of the life he had led. There was great carousing under his roof ; he had " twenty-two women in his house, and frequently with infants at the breast." Revelling and disorder were constant. He has the generosity of a robber, and if ho takes he lets others take. "Double my pension of five hundred crowns — even if I had a thousand times as much — I would always be straitened. Everybody comes to me, as if I were custodian of the royal treasury. Let a poor girl be confined and my house pays the expenses. Let any one be put in prison and the cost falls on me. Soldiers without an equipment, unfortunate strangers, and quantities of stray cavaliers come to my house to refit. It is not two months since a young man \voun,ded near my residence, was brought into oue of my apartments." He is plundered by his domestics. AU is confusion in this free tenement ; vases, busts, sketches, caps and mantles presented to him, Cyprus wine, birds, hares and rabbits sent to him, melons and grapes that he himself buys for the even- ing entertainment. He eats well, diinks better and makes his marble halls ring with his jovial sallies. Partridges arrive ; " roasted, as soon as caught, I stopped my hymn in honor of hares and began at once to sing the praises of the winged ! My good friend Titian, bestowing a glance on these savory morsels, be- gan to sing in duet with me the Blagnificat I had al- ready commenced." To this music of the jaws is added another. The famous songstress Franceschina is one of his guests ; he kisses " her beautiful hands, two charm- ing robbers whicb take not alone people's pursc;^ but their hearts." "It is my wish," says he, "that where my dishes prove unsavory there may the sweetness of 13 290 VENETIAN ART. your voice appear." Courtezans are at home in his doin icile. He has written books'^ for their use and taught them the accomplishments of their profession. He roceiyes them, pets them, writes to them and recruits them. In the morning, after having got rid of his vis- itors, when he does not go to amuse himself in the studios of Titian and Sansovino, he visits grisettes, gives them " a few sous" and has them sew " handker- chiefs, sheets and shirts in order that they may earn their living." Thus occupied he collects and installs under his roof six young women who are called AretineSj a seraglio without walls where pranks, quar- rels and imbroglios make the most remarkable uproar. He lives in this way thirty years, sometimes horse- whipped but always pensioned, familiar with the highest, receiving from a bishop blue morocco shoes for one of his mistresses, and a companion of Titian, of Tintoretto and of Sansovino. And better still, Aretino founds a school ; he has imitators as parasitical and as obscene as himself, Doni, Dolce, Mcolo Franco his secretary and enemy, the author of the Priapea and who ended his career at Rome on the gibbet. Thus flourished at Yenice a literature of buffoonery and of lewdness which, tempered by the gallantries of Para- bosco, repels a superior one with the sonnets of Baffo. Judge of readers by the book and of guests by the mansion. "With this glimpse we partially recognize the inner character of men of whom the painters have transmitted to us the outward image ; here it is that we obtain the principal traits explanatory of contem- porary art, the haughty grandeur suitable to the undis- puted masters of such a republic, the brutal and teem- ing energy surviving the ages of virile activity, the magnificent and impudent sensuality which, devel- oped by accumulated wealth and by unquestioned * Ragionamenti. — Letters to Zufo'^na and Zafetta. ARETINO. 291 Becujity, expands and revels in tlie full brightness of suns? line. O; e point remains, the sentiment itself for art. We find it everywhere in Venice in those days, in private houi.es, among bodies of great public functionaries, among the patricians, among people of the ordinary class, even in those coarse and practical natures who, like Aretino, seem to be born to live jollily and to spec- ulate on their associates. Whatever remains of inward nobleness blooms in that direction. Their libertinage and their assurance sympathize without effort with the embellished image of license and force. They find in muscular giants, in stout naked beauties, in the archi- tectural and luxurious pomp of painting an aliment suited to their energetic and unbridled instincts. Moral baseness does not exclude sensuous refinements; on the contrary it throws the field open, and the man whose propensities are wholly on one side is only therefore the better qualified to appreciate the nicest shades of pleas- ure. Aretino bows reverentially to Michael Angelo ; all he asks of him is one of his sketches " in order to enjoy it during life and to bear it with him to his tomb." With Titian he is a ti-ue friend, natural and simple ; his admiration and his taste are sincere. He speaks of color with a precision and vivacity of im- pression worthy of Titian himself. " Signor," he aadresses him, "my dear companion, I have to-day, against my usual practice, dined alone, or rather in company with the annoyances of that quatrau fever which leaves me no rehsh for the savor of any dish. I arose from table wearied with the depressing ennui ^\dth which I sat down, and then leaning my arm on the window-sill, and resting my breast and almost all my person thereon, I fell into contemplation of the admirable spectacle of the innumerable barks ^vhich, filled with strangers and Venetians, dehghted not alone those in them but again the Grand Canal All fi92 VENETIAN ART. at once two gondolas appear and, manned by some famous oarsmen, contend for speed, and furnisli the public with pastime. I also took great pleasure in contemplating the multitude which, in order to witness this amusement, had stopped on the Rialto bridge, on the Camerlinghes bank, at the Pescarita, on the fragJieitc of St. Sophia and on that of Casa di Mosto. And whilst on both sides the crowd dispersed, each his own way with hilarious applause, I, as one irksome to him- self, who knows not what to do with his mind or with his thoughts, turn my eyes up to the firmament. Never, since God created it, was the sky so adorned with the exquisite painting of Hghts and shades ! The atmo- sphere was such as those who envy Titian would like to produce, because they are not able to be a Titian. . . . at first the buildings which, of genuine stone, seem nevertheless a material transfigured by artifice, then daylight, in certain spots pure and lively and in others disturbed and deadened. Consider yet again another marvel, dense and humid clouds which, on the principal plane, descend to the roofs of the edifices, and on a remoter one sink behind them even to the middle of their mass. The entire right consisted of a subdued color suspended under a dark gray-brown. I gazed in admiration on the varied tints which these clouds presented to the eye, the nearest brilliant with flames from the solar realm, the remotest with a ruddy and less ardent vermilion. Oh, the fine strokes of the pencil which from this side colored the air and made it recede behind the palaces as Titian practises it in his landscapes ! In certain parts appeared a blue-green, in others an azure rendered green and truly commingled by the capricious invention of nature, the mistress of all masters. It is she who with clear or obscure tints retires or models forms according to her own conception. And I myself who know how your pencil is the soul of your soul, exclaimed three or foui times : * Titian. ARETINO. 293 where art thou ?' " One here recognizes the backgrounds of the pictures of tlie Venetian artists ; behokl the grand white clouds of Yoronese sleepiog suspended beneath the colonnades, the blue distances, the atmosphere palpitat- ing with vague gleams, the ruddy, warm, brown shadow!? of Titian. CHAPTEE III. 'AHE ducal PALACE.—CHARACTBRS of the day.— the ALLEGORICAi PAINTINGS OF VERONESE AND TINTORETTO.— THE RAPE OP EUROPA. / There are families of plants with species so near akin ' that the resemblances are greater than the differences : such are the Venetian painters, and not only the four most celebrated, Giorgone, Titian, Tintoretto and Ver- onese, but others less illustrious, Palma-Vecchio, Boni- fazio, ; Paris Bordone, Pordenone, and that crowd enumerated by Eidolfi in his "Lives," contemporaries, relatives and successors of the great men, Andrea Vi- centino, Palma the younger, Zelotti, Bazzaco, Padovi- nano, Bassano, Schiavone, Moretti, and so many others. What the eye clearly detects is the common and general type; special and personal traits remain, at the first glance, in the background. All have labored together and in turn at the Ducal Palace ; but, through the in- voluntary unity of their talents, their paintings form a complete whole. /' At the first glance the eyes are disappointed ; except- ing three or four halls the apartments are low and of small dimensions. The chamber of the Council of Ten and those around it are gilded cabinets inadequate for the figures which occupy them ; 1 ut after a few mo- ments the cabinet is forgotten and nothing is seen but the figures. Power and voluptuousness display them- selves superbly and unrestrainedly. Naked men and painted caryatides in the angles project in such relief that at first sight one takes them for statues ; a colossal breath inflates their breasts ; their thighs and shoulders are writhing. On the ceiling a Mercury seen on the' THE IDEAL. 295 belly, eutirelv nude, is aliaost a Ivubons figure but with a more marked sensuality. A gigantic Neptune urges on liis marine steeds who are dashing off on the waves ; his foot rests on the edge of the chariot, and his enormous rudd}' torso throws itself back ; he raises his conch with the glee of a bestial divinity ; the salt air whistles through his scarf, hair and beard ; one cannot imagine, wdthout seeing it, such furious inspira- tion, such overflowing animal vigor, such joyous pagan carnality, such a triumph of grand, free, licentious being revelling in air and in sunshine. What an injus- tice, that of reducing the Venetians to the depicting of happy repose and to the art of flattering the eye ! They, too, have painted grandeur and heroism ; the energetic and acting body has of itself affected them ; like the Flemings thej^ have their own colossi. Their drawing, even without color, is of itseK capable of ex- pressing the full solidity and vitality of the human structure. Take, for example, in this very hall, the four grisailles b}^ Veronese, five or six veiled or half- naked women, all so vigorous and of such a fi-ame that their thighs and arms might embrace and crush a com- batant, and yet of a physiognomy so simple or so spirited that in spite of their gaiety they are virgin like the Yenuses and the Psyches of E-aphael. The more the ideal figures of Venetian art are con- sidered the more do we feel behind us the breath of an heroic age. The grand draped old men wdth bald brows are patrician kings of the Archipelago, barbaric sultans who, trailing their silken simarres, receive tribute and order executions. Superb women in long variegated and disordered robes are the imperial daughters of the republic, like that Catherine Cornaro of whom Venice received Cyprus. There are combat- ants' muscles wdthin the bronzed breasts of sailors and captains ; their bodies, tanned by sun and wind, have been contending with the athletic forms of janissaries ^96 VENETIAN ART. tlieir turbans, pelisses and furs, and their sword-liafts gleaming with jewels, the whole of Asiatic magnifi- cence mingles on their persons with flowing antique drapery and with the nudities of pagan tradition. Their straightforward look is yet tranquil and savage, and the spirit and tragic grandeur of their expression tells of the proximity to a life in which man, concen- trated in a few simple passions, thought of being mas- ter only because he would not be a slave, and of slaying only because he would not be slain. Such is the spirit of a painting by Veronese which, in the hall of the Council of Ten, represents an old warrior and a young woman j it is an allegory — but the subject is of little conse- quence. The man is seated and bending forward with a grim air, his chin resting on his hand ; his colossal shoulders and arm, and his naked leg, bound with a lion-headed cnemide, issue from his massive and disor- dered drapery; with his turban and white beard, a meditative brow, and the features of a wearied lion he looks like a pasha suffering with ennui. She, with downcast eyes, rests her hands on her soft breast ; her superb tresses are looped up with pearls ; she seems to be some captive awaiting her master's will ; and her neck and inclining face become of a deeper glow in the shadow that bathes them. Almost all the other halls are empty ; the paintings have been removed to an inner apartment. We go in quest of the keeper of the gallery, and tell him in bad Italian that we are without letters of introduction and have no claim or right whatever to be admitted to see them, whereupon he condescends to lead us to the closed apartment, to lift the curtains one after the other and to lose a couple of hours in showing them to us. I have enjoyed nothing more keenly in Italy ; the canvases are lower than our eyes ; we can look at them as closely as we please, at ease, and we are alone. Here are bronzed giants by Tintoretto, the skin folded IDEAI.S. 297 bj the play of muscles ; Saint Andrew and Saint Mark, veritable colossi like tliose of Rubens. There is a Saint Christopher by Titian, a sort of bronzed and stooping Atlas, his four limbs in action to sustain the burden of a world, and on his neck, in extraordinary con- trast, a little soft smiling urchin whose infantile flesh Las the delicacy and the grace of a flower. Above all, a dozen of mythological paintings and allegories by Tin- toretto and Veronese of such brilliancy, of such en- trancing seductiveness that a veil falls from the ej'es, revealing an unknown world, a paradise of delights ex- tending far beyond all that one could dream or imagine. When the Old Man of the Mountain transported his youths asleep into his harem in order to qualify them for extreme devotedness to him such, without doubt, was the spectacle he prepared for them. On a strand, on the margin of the infinite sea, Ariadne in serious mood receives the ring from Bac- chus, while Yenus, with a golden crown, approaches in the air to honor theii* nuptials. She is the sublime beauty of nude flesh, as she appears on rising from the waves viviiied by the sun and graduated by shadows. The goddess swims in liquid light, and her curved back, her thigh and her full forms palpitate half-envel- oped in a white diaphanous veil. Where is the language with whicli to paint the beauty of an attitude, of a. tone, of a contour ? What will portray healthy and rosy flesh under the amber transparency' of gauze ? How represent the mellow fulness of a living form and the undulating limbs losing themselves in a flexible body ? She really swims in light as a fish swims in its lake and the atmosphere filled with vague reflections em- braces and caresses her. Alongside of this are two young women, "Peace" and " Plenty." Peace, with a tremulous delicacy, in- clines toward her sister ; she has turned away and hei head is seen onl}' in shadow, but she possesses the S98 VENETIAN ART. freshness of immortal youth. How luminous theii gathered tresses, blonde as the ripened wheat ! Theii legs and bodies are slightly deflected ; one seems to be failing, and this moving curvature as it commences is wonderful. No painter has to the same degree appre- ciated full, yielding forms or so vividly arrested the flight of action. They are about to take a posture or to walk ; the eye and the mind involuntarily expand the situation ; we see in their present a future and a past ; the artist has fixed a fleeting moment but one big with its environment. Nobody, save Rubens, has thus ex- pressed the incessant flow and fluidity of life. Pallas, meanwhile, repels Mars, and her manly cuirass with dark reflections brings out with irresistible coquetry the exquisite whiteness of the shoulder and knee. More animated and more voluptuous still is the coquetry of the group of Mercury and the Three Graces. All three are deflected ; with Tintoretto a body is not a living one when its posture is passive ; the display of a deflected figure adds a mobile grace to the universal attractiveness emanating from the rest of its beauty. One of them, seated, extends her arms, and the light that falls on her flank makes portions of her face, neck and bosom glow against the vague pur- ple of the shadow. Her sister, kneeling, with downcast eyes, takes her hand ; a long gauze, fine like those sil- very webs of the fields brightened by the morning dawn, clings around the waist and expands over the bosom whose blush it allows to appear. In the other hand she holds a blooming bunch of flowers, ascending upward and resting their snowy purity on the ruddy whiteness of the ample arms. The third, tortuous, dis- plays herself in full, and from neck to heel, the eye follows the embracing of the muscles covering the superb framework of the spine and hips. Waving tresses, small chin, rounded eyelids, nose slightly turned up, dainty ears coiled like a mother-of-pearl IDEALS. ^9» sliell, the entire countenance expresses a joyous arch- ness and malice similar to that of a hardy courtezan. This is the trait recognizable in Tintoretto, ruder and more decisive, also his more powerful color, more im- petuous action and more virile nudities. Veronese has tones more silvery and more rosy, gentler figures, less darkness of shadow and a richer and calmer decoration. Near a half column an ample and noble woman. Industry, seated before Innocence, weaves an aerial tissue ; her beaming eyes look up to the blue of the sky ; her waving blonde tresses are full of light, her half-open mouth seems like a pomegranate ; a vague smile allows her pearly teeth to appear and the transparency in which she is steeped has the rosy tinge of a brilliant aurora. The other, alongside of a lamb, bends over with perfect abandonment ; the silvery reflections of her silk draper}^ glow around her ; her head is in shade and an auroral flush lightly falls on her lips, ear and cheek. Figures like these are not to be described. We can- not imagine beforehand what poesy there is in a vest- ment or in rich attire. In another picture by Veronese, " Venice Queen," she sits on a throne between Peace and Justice ; her white silk robe embroidered with golden hlies undulates over a mantle of ermine and scarlet ; her arm, delicate hand and bending dimpled fingers rest their satiny purity and soft serpentine contours on the lustrous material. The face is in shadow — a haK-shadow roseate with a cool, palpable atmo- sphere enlivening still more the carmuie of the lips ; the lips are cherries while all the shadow is intensified by the lights on the hair, the soft gleams of pearls on the neck and in the ears and the scintillations of the diadem whose jewels seem to be magical eyes. She smiles with an air of royal and beaming benignity like a flower happy in its expanded and blooming petals. Near her, Peace, inclining abandons herself, almost 300 VENETIAN ART. falling ; her robe of yellow silk studded with red flowers gathers into folds under the richest of violet mantles ; strings of pearls wind around under her white veil among her pale tresses, and how divine the small ear ! There is another picture still more celebrated, " The Bape of Europa." For brilliancy, fancifulness, extra- ordinary refinement and invention in color it has no equal. The reflection of the foliage overhead bathes the entire picture with an aqueous green tone ; the white drapery of Europa is tinged with it ; she, arch, subtle and languishing, seems almost like an eighteenth century figure. This is one of those works in which, through subtlety and combination of tones, a painter surpasses himself, forgets his public, loses himself in the unexplored regions of his art, and, discarding all known rules, finds, outside of the common world of sensible appearances, harmonies, contrasts and peculiar successes beyond all verisimilitude and all proportion. Rembrandt has produced a similar work in his " Night watch." One has to look at it and keep silent. CHAPTEK lY. TITIAN, HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER.— HIS WORKS IN THE ACADEMT.- ''THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN,'' AND OTHERS.— SANTA MARIA DELLA SALUTE.— "THE SACRIFICE OF ACRAHAM."— " CAIN AND ABEL/'-THE WORKS OF BONIFAZIO, PALMA-VECCHTO AND VERO- NESE. The "Lives" of Ridolfi are very dry, and all that Vasari adds to them is of little import. In attempting to picture Titian to ourselves we imagine a happy man, " the most fortunate and most healthy of his species, heaven having awarded to him nothing but favors and felicities," first among his rivals, visited at his house by the kings of France and of Poland, favorite of the Emperor, of Pliihp II. of the doges, of Pope Paul III, of all the Italian princes ; created a Knight and count of the empire, overwhelmed with commissions, liberally compensated, pensioned and worthily enjoy- ing his good fortune. He lives in great state, dresses splendidly and has at his table cardinals, seignors, the greatest artists and the ablest writers of the day. " Al- though not very learned" he is in his place in this high society ; for he has " natural intelligence, Avhile familiarity with courts has taught him every proper term of the Knight and of the man of the world/' so well that we find him "very courteous, endowed with rare politeness, and with the sweetest ways and manners." There is nothing strained or repulsive in his character. His letters to princes and to ministers concerning his pictures and his pensions contain that degree of humility which then denoted the savoir- vivr". of a subject. He takes men well and he takes iiic well, that is to say he enjoys life like other men 803 VENETIAN AET. without either excess or baseness. He is no rigorist his correspondence with Aretino reveals a boon com- panion eating and drinking daintily and heartily, ap- preciative of music, of elegant luxury and the society of pleasure-seeking women. He is not violent, not tor- mented by immeasurable and dolorous conceptions ; his painting is healthy, exempt from morbid question- ings and from painful complications ; he paints in- cessantly, without turmoil of the brain and without passion during his whole life. He commenced while still a child, and his hand was naturally obedient to his mind. He declares that " his talent is a special grace from heaven ;" that it is necessary to be thus endowed in order to be a good painter, for, otherwise " one cannot give birth to any but imperfect works ;" that in this art " genius must not be agitated." Around him beauty, taste, education, the talents of others, reflect back on him, as from a mirror, the brightness of his own genius. His brother, his son Orazio, his two cousins Cesare and Fabrizio, his relative Marco di Titiano, are all excellent painters. His daughter Lavinia, dressed as Flora with a basket of fruit on her head, furnishes him with a model in the freshness of her carnation, and in the amplitude of her admirable forms. His thought thus flows on like a broad river in a uniform channel ; nothing disturbs its course, and its own in- crease satisfies him ; he aims at nothing beyond hi^ art, like Leonardo or Michael Angelo. "Daily he designs something in chalk or in charcoal;" a supper with Sansovino or Aretino makes the day complete. He is never in a hurry ; he keeps his paintings a long time at home in order to study them carefully and render them still more perfect. His pictures do not scale off; he uses, like his master Giorgone, simple colors, " especially red and blue which never deform figures." For eighty years and over he thus paints, completing % century of existence, a pestilence, at last, being the TITIAN. 303 cause of liis death ; the state sets aside its regula- tions in order to honor him with a public funeral. It would be necessary to revert to the brightest days of pagan antiquity in order to find a genius so well adapted to things around him, an expansion of faculties so natural and so harmonious, a similar concord of man with himself and with the world without. We can see at the Academy the two extremes of his development, his last picture, a " Descent from the Cross" finished b}^ Palma the younger, and one of his early pictures, a " Visitation," which he probably exe- cuted on quitting the school of John Bellini. In the latter work the contours are precise ; the figure of St. Joseph is almost dry, the sentiment of the color mani- festing itself only through the intensity of the dark tint, an opposition of tones and the softness of a pale violet robe enlivening the full blue of a mantle. It is, again, an altar-piece, the sober memorial of a revered legend. At the other extremity of his career he converts the le- gend into a grandiose and splendid decoration. That which he first displays in this " Descent from the Cross" is a broad white and gi'ay architectural construction so arranged as to give relief to the brightest tones of the drapery and of the flesh-coloring, a portico bordered with monumental statues and with iron-headed pedes- tals, where living flowers twine around the subdued bril- liancy of the marbles, forming those beautiful effects of light and shade which the sun defines on the rotundi- ties of arches. Under these, the Magdalen, in a green robe, and the gi^eat red mantle of Nicodemus, unite their mingled hues with the pallid and peculiarly luminous tone of the corpse ; the aged disciple on his knees clasps his master's hand for the last time and the Magdalen, extending her iirms, gives utterance to her deep feeling. It might be called a pagan tragedy ; the artist has freed himseK from the christian mood and is now sim- ply an artist. We have here the history in full of the 504 VENETIAN ART. sixteentli century both at Venice and elsewhere ; with Ti* tian, however, the transformation was not long delayed. An immense painting of his youth, the " Presentatior; of the Virgin," shows with what boldness and facility he enters, from almost the first flight which his genius takes on the career which he is to pursue to the end. Whilst the Florentines, educated by the goldsmiths, concentrate art on the imitation of individual form, the Venetians, left to themselves expand it until they embrace entire nature. It is not one man or one group which they see but a full scene, five or six complete groups, architec- ture, distances, a sky, a landscape, in short, a complete fragment of being; here are fifty personages, three pala- ces, the f a9ade of a temple, a portico, an obelisk, hillsides, trees, mountains and banks of clouds all superposed in the air. At the top of a vast series of gray stone steps stands a body of priests and the high pontiff. The young girl, meanwhile, blue in a blonde aureole, as- cends midway, lifting up her robe ; she has nothing of the sublime about her ; she is copied from life and her little cheeks are plump, she raises her hand toward the high-priest as if to steady herself and to inquire of him what he wishes of her ; she is a perfect child, her mind, as yet, being free of all thought ; Titian found those just like her at catechism exercises. "We see that nature delights him, that real life is sufficient for him, that he does not seek beyond this, that the poesy of actual objects appears to him sufficiently great. In the foreground facing the spectator and at the foot of the staircase he has placed on old crone in a blue dress and a white hood, a true village character who has brought her marketing to town and keeps her basket of eggs and chickens alongside of her ; a Fleming would not risk more. But quite near to her, under the vines clinging to the stones, is the bust of an antique statue ; a superb procession of men and women in long vestments displays itself at the foot of the steps ; rounded arcades. TITIAN. 308 Corinthian columns, statues and cornices form a mag- nificent decoration for tlie fagades of the palaces. One feels that he is in an actual city peojoled with peas- ants and ordinary men and women, attending to busi- ness and practising their devotions, but decked with antiquities, grandiose in structure, beautified by the arts illuminated by the sun and situated in the noblest and richest of landscapes. More meditative, more divorced from realities the Florentines create an ideal and abstract world above our own ; more spontaneous, more placid, Titian loves our world, comprehends it, shuts himself up within it and reproduces it, ever embellishing it without either recasting or suppressing it. In seeking for the principal trait which distinguishes him fi'om his neighbors we find it to be simplicity ; by not refining on color, action and types he obtains pow- erful effect with color, action and types. Such is the characteristic quality of his "Assumption," so celebra- ted. A reddish, purple, intense tint envelops the entire picture, the utmost vigor of color and a sort of healthy energy breathing from the painting throughout. Below are the apostles deflected and seated, nearly all of them with their heads raised to heaven and as bronzed as the sailors of the Adriatic; their hair and their beards are black ; an intense shadow bathes their vis- ages ; scarcely does the sombre ferruginous tint indicate the flesh. One of them, in the centre, in a broTvn man- tle almost disappears in the darks rendered still darker by the surrounding brightness. Two pieces of drapery, red as living arterial blood, project still more vividly in contrast with two large green mantles, the whole forming a colossal commotion of writhing arms, muscular sliovl- ders, impassioned heads and confused draperies. Over- head, midway in the air, rises the Virgin in the midst of a halo glowing like the vapor of a furnace ; she is of their race, healthy and vigorous, unecstatic and without the mystic smile, proudly intrenched in her red mantle 306 VENETIAN ART. which is enveloped by one of blue. The stuff takes countless folds in the movements of her superb form : her attitude is athletic, her expression grave, and the low tone of her features comes out in full relief against the flaming brilliancy of the aureole. At her feet, ex- tending over the entire space, is displayed a glittering garland of youthful angels ; their fresh, empurpled, rosy carnations traversed by shadows diffuse amidst these energetic tones and forms the brightest bloom of human vitality ; two of these detaching themselves from the rest, come forward and sport in full light ; their infantile forms revel with divine freedom in the air around them. Nothing is effeminate or languid ; grace here maintains its sway. It is a beautiful pagan festival, that of earnest force and beaming youthfnlness ; Venetian art centres in this work and perhaps reaches its climax. Titian's pictures are not numerous in Venice, Europe, in general, having got possession of them ; enough of them still remain, however, to show his full power. He was endowed with that unique gift of producing Venuses who are real women and colossi who are real men, that is to say, a talent for imitating objects closely enough to win us with the illusion and of so profoundly transform- ing objects as to enkindle reverie. He has at once shown in the same nude beauty, a courtezan, a patrician's mis- tress, a listless and voluptuous fisherman's daughter and a powerful ideal figure, the masculine force of a Bea-goddess and the undulating forms of a queen of the empyrean. He has at once made visible in the same draped figure a warrior patriarch of the crusades, a veteran hero of maritime strife, a muscular, athletic wrestler, a podestat's or a sultan's grim and grandiose air, a stern imperial or consular liead, and witli this, or by its side a rude old soldier with swollen veins, the vulgar mask of a spectacled judge, the bestial features of a bearded Sclave, the sunburnt back and savage look of a galley-rower, the flattened skull and vulture eye of TITIAN. ''^01 an embittered Jew, tlie ferocious glee of a fat execu- tioner, every kindred wave l-}' wliicli animal natitre joins itself to human nature. Tlirougli tliis comprehen- sion of actual objects the field of art is ten times expand- ed. The painter is no longer reduced, like the classic masters, to an imperceptible variation of fifteen or twenty accepted types. The infinite diversities of Naturo with all her inequalities are 0|)en to him ; the strongest contrasts are within his range ; each of his works is as rich as it is novel ; the spectator finds in him, as in Rubens, a complete image of the world around liim, a physiology, a history, a psychology in an epitomized form. Beneath the suiall and sublime Olympus, with a few Greek forms sitting there eternally worshipped by the kneeling orthodox, the artist takes possession of the broad populous earth whereon the bloom of all things is incessantly repeating itself. The accidental, the irregular, everything, to him, is good ; they con- stitute a part of the forces which keep the human sap in circulation ; quaintness, deformities and excesses have their interest as well as efflorescence and splendor ; his only need is to feel and to render the powerful impul- sion of the inward vegetation upheaving brute matter and converting it into living forms in the heat of sun- shine. Hence the ideas that crowd on the mind on re- examining liis paintings in San-Rocco, in the Salute and in San-Giovanni, on meditating over those in Rome and in Florence and in Blenheim and at London. Wo linger in this church of Santa Maria deUa Salute : we smile at the pretty, plump and rosy communicants of Luca Giordano. We leave to it its pretentious decoration and affected statues which the artists of the seventeenth century have displayed under its arches. We compre- hend the value of a simple and robust genius satisfied with imitating and fortifying nature. We contem- plate the ceiling of the choir, then, in the sacristy, the manly Roman figTire of Habakkuk, the bronzed and tra- 808 VENETIAIn^ aet. gic mask of Elias almost black beneath the white mitre, a' bald-headed St. Mark thrown backward of so spir- ited a face and colored with such a beautiful reflection of youth that we feel in it the vitality of great races in- vincible against the attacks of time. Above all we re- turn to the paintings of the ceiling : Goliath slain by David, Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and Cain kilHng Abel. We recognize in the boldness and inspiration of these colossi, the vigorous hand which traced the celebrated imageries, the "Six Saints" and the formidable "Pas- sage of the Red Sea." Save Michael Angelo, nobody has thus handled the human frame. Abraham is a giant and exterminator ; after seeing his head and gray beard, his thigh and tw^o nude arms impetuously is- suing from his yellow drapery we feel the presence of a genuine patriarch, combatant and dominator of men ; he lifts his arm and all his muscles are fully dis- tended ; the head of the boy Isaac is already bent down by his violent hand. The movement is so energetic that one single impulse runs through all three of the personages from the feet of the precipitating angel arresting the sword to the half-contorted body of the man turning around, and across him, even to the yield- ing neck of the prostrate child. — More furious still is the gesture of the fratricide : not that Titian renders him repulsive ; on the contrary his impetuosity bears the spectator along with him ; it is not an assassin but a Hercules slaying an enemy. Abel, overthrown on his side, reels, stretching out his limbs. The other, as gi- gantic and muscular as an athlete, one foot on the vic- tim's breast falls back and with the full might of his torso and rigid arms is about to destroy him. A som- bre vinous tone reddens with its threatening hues the intersections and ridsjes of the muscles and tendons and the swellings and depressions of the excited flesh, while ibe bestial visage of the murderer, obliquely illu- BONIFAZIO. 3^ Diinated on one temple, is lost in a black fore- shortening. Tlie Acadermj and the ChurcJm.—l liave neither cour- age nor leisure to speak of other paintings. The Academy contains seven hundred of them, to which add those of the churches. It would require a volume ; moreover the effect oftenest consists of a tone of luminous flesh near a sombre one, and in the grada- tions of tint of a red or of a green piece of drapery. One may characterize it in gross with words, but when it comes to delicacies words are inadequate. The only proper thing to do is to come and enjoy for yourself. We go repeatedly and again and again to the Academy. We traverse the suspension bridge, the sole modern and ungraceful work in Venice. We enter haphazard one of these twenty halls and select some of the mas- ters with whom we Avill pass the afternoon, Palma- Vecchio for instance and Bonifazio, whose color is as rich and intense as Titian's. They are plants of the same family ; but the public ejQ is fixed on the top- most branch of the stem. One of the pictures by Bonifazio, " The Wicked Rich Man's Banquet," is ad- mirable. Under an open portico, between veined columns, are seated large and magnificent w^omen in square low-necked dresses and black velvet skirts, with sleeves of ruddy gold and in robes rudely figured with red and yellow ; superb forms of a stout build, with fleshy muscles audaciously displayed in the barbarous luxury of variegated stuffs descending in heavj^ folds about their heels. A little negro, a small domestic animal, holds a scroll of music before a female singer and some players on instruments ; the air resounds with voices, and, to complete this noisy pomp, we per- ceive outside of the gardens, horses, falconers and all the paraphernalia of seigneurial parade. Amidst this display sits the master in a gTeat mantle of red velvet, •"^lO VENETIAN ART. sanguine and sombre like a Henry VIII. with the hard and stern expression of a sensuality gorging itself without satiety.* Pleasures of this description would repel us ; we have become too cultivated and too tame to comprehend them ; courtezans of that stamp would frighten us ; they are too unintellectual and too gross ; their arms would fell us to the ground and their eyes give an expression of too great hardness. Only in the sixteenth century did people love massive and violent voluptuousness : then the fury of lusts and sensual gluttony were copied from life ; but, on the other hand, it was only in the sixteenth century, that they knew how to paint perfect beauty. We recross the iron bridge, so formal and so ugly, and, plunging into a labyrinth of petty streets, go to Santa Maria Formosa, in order to see the " Saint Barbara" of Palma-Yecchio. She is no saint, but a blooming young girl, the most attractive and lovable that one can imagine. She stands erect, proud in her bearing with a crown on her brow and her robe, carelessly gathered around the waist, un- dulates in folds of orange purple against the bright scarlet of her mantle. Two streams of magnificent brown hair glide down on either side of her neck ; her delicate hands seem to be those of a goddess ; one half of her face is in shadow and half-lights play upon hei uplifted hand. Her beautiful e^^es are beaming and her fresh and delicate lips are about to smile ; she dis- plays the gay and noble spirit of Venetian women , ample and not too full, spirituelle and benevolent, she seems to be made to give happiness to herself and to others. Let us set the others aside. What a pity, however, to quit the ^Ye or six Veroneses in the Academ}^, his " Repast at the house of Levi," his " Apostles on the Clouds," his " Annunciation," his virgins, his lustrous * Compare this with the same scene treated by Teniers. VERONESE. 311 variegated marble columns, liis golden niches rayed with dark arabesques, his grand staircases, his balus- trades profiled on the blue sky, his ruddy silks striped with gold, his white horses rearing under their scarlet housings, his guards and his negroes decked in red and green, his stately robes starred with intricate brandl- ings and lustrous designs, and especially the wonderful diversity of heads and the tranquil harmony that radi- ates like music from his silvery color, his serene figures and his rich decorations ! If Titian is sovereign, and the dominator of the school, Yeronese is its regent and viceroy. If the former has the simple force and gran- deur of its founders, the latter possesses the calmness and genial smile of an undisputed and legitimate mon- arch. That which he seeks and finds is not the sublime or heroic, not violence or sanctity, not purity or softness : all these conditions show only one of the faces of nature, and indicate a purification, an effort, enervation or intractability ; what he loves is expanded beauty, the flower in full bloom but intact, just when its rosy petals unfold themselves while none of them are, as yet, withered. He has the air of addressing himself to his contemporaries and of saying to them : " We are noble beings, Venetians and grand seignors of a privileged and superior race. Let us not reject or repress anything about us ; mind, heart and senses, everything we have merits gratification. Let us delight our instincts and our soul, and let us make of life a fete in which felicity shall confound itself with beauty." But you may see several of his great works in the Louvre and you will understand him much better through a picture than through any reasoning of mine. One man of genius, on the contrary, Tintoretto, has almost all his works at Venice. One has no suspicion of his value until one has come here. As a lay is stiD left to me let us devote it to him. CHAPTER Y. fRE CHARACTER AND GENIUS OF TINTORETTO.-TIIE ' MIRACLE Oi ST. MARK."— THE SCUOLA OF SAN-ROCCO.— THE " CRL CIFIXION. ' - GENERAL IMPRESSIONS. A MOKE vigorous and more fecund artistic tempeia- ment is not to be found in the world. In many particu- lars he resembles Michael Angelo. He approximates to him in savage originality and in energy of will. But a few days transpire when Titian, his master, on seeing his sketches, becomes jealous, gets alarmed and sends him away from his school. Child as he is he deter- mines to learn, and to achieve success unaided. He procures plaster casts from the antique and from Michael Angelo's works, seeks out and copies Titian's paintings, draws from the nude, dissects, models in wax and in clay, drapes his models, suspends them in the air, studies foreshortenings and works desperately. Wherever a painting is being executed he is present " and learns his profession by looking on." His brain ferments and his conceptions so torment him that he is obliged to get rid of them ; he goes with the masons to the citadel and traces figures around the clock. Mean- while he practises with Schiavone, and thenceforth feels himself a master ; " his thoughts boil ;" he suggests to the fathers of the Madonna del' Orto four grand subjects, "The Worship of the Golden Calf," the "Last Judg- ment," hundreds of feet of canvas, thousands of figures, an overflow of imagination and genius ; he will execute them gratuitously, requiring no pay but his expenses ; he requires nothing but an issue and an outlet. On another occasion the brotherhood of San-Eocco having demanded of five celebrated artists cartoons for a painting which they wish to have executed he secretlj TINTORETTO. 313 takes tlie measure of the place, completes the picture in a few days, brings it to the spot designated and declares that he presents it to San-Kocco. His competitors stand aghast at this fury of invention and of dispatch : and thus does he always labor ; it seems as if his mind was a volcano always charged and in a state of eruption. Canvases of twenty, forty and seventy feet, crowded with figures as large as life — overthrown, massed to- gether, launched through the air, foreshortened in the most violent manner and with splendid effects of light — scarcely suffice to contain the rapid, fiery, dazzling jet of his brain. He covers entire churches with them^ and his life, like that of Michael Angelo, is there ex- hausted. His habits are those of all savage, violent geniuses out of harmony with society, in whom the inner growth of the sentiments is so strong that pleas- ure is distasteful and who find refuge, composure and tranquillity only in their art. " He lived in his own thoughts, afar from every joy," absorbed in his studies and with his work. On ceasing to paint he retires to the remotest corner of his dwelling, and shuts himself up in a chamber where, in order to see clearly, a lamp has to be lighted in the daytime. Here, for diversion, he fashions his models ; nobody is permitted to enter never does he paint before any one except his intimates, " His sole ambition is fame," and especially the desire to surpass himself, to attain to perfection. His words are few and trenchant ; his grave and rude physiogno- my is the exact image of his soul. * On uttering a piquant remark his face remains fixed, he does not. laugh. Bravely and proudly does he lay out his own course, singly and against the open jealousy and hos- tility of other painters, and maintains himself erect befoi'e the public as before the rulers of opinion. Pis- tol in hand he silences, with cool i'Ony, the cynio See his portrait by himself. 314 VENETIAN ART. Aretino. On his friends exhibiMng a picture in public he counsels them to stay at home : " let them shoot their arrows, people must get accustomed to your con- ceptions." The more one studies his life and works the more one sees in him a colorist Michael Angelo, less concentrated than he, less self-mastering, less qualified to refine upon his ideas, wholly given up tc his fancies, and whose impetuosity makes of him an improvisator. Hence it is that when his conception is just or matured he rises to an extraordinary height. No painting, in my judgment, surpasses or perhaps equals his St. Mark in the Academy ; at all events no painting has made an equal impression on my mind. It is avast picture twenty feet square containing fifty figures of the size of life, St. Mark sombre in the light, and a slave luminous amidst sombre personages. The saint descends from the upper- most sky head foremost, precipitated, suspended in the air in order to rescue a slave from punishment ; his head is in shadow and his feet are in the light ; his body, compressed by an extraordinary feat of fore- shortening, plunges at one bound with the impetuosity of an eagle. No one, save Eubens, has so caught the instantaneousness of motion, the fury of flight ; along- side of this vehemence and this truthfulness classic figures seem stiff, as if copied after Academy models whose arms are upheld by strings ; we are borne along with and follow him to the ground, as yet unreached. Here, the naked slave, thrown upon his back in front of the spectator and as miraculously foreshortened as the other, glows with the luminiousness of a Correggio. His superb, virile, muscular body palpitates; his ruddy cheeks, contrasted with his black curled beard, are empurpled with the brightest hues of life. The axes of iron and wood have been shattered to pieces without having touched his flesh, and all are gazing at them. The turbaned executioner with upraised hands " ST. MARK." 315 ijliows the judge the broken handle with an air oi amazement, which excites him throughout. The judge, in a red Venetian pourpoint, springs half way off his seat and from his marble steps. The assistants around stretch themselves out and crowd up, some in sixteenth century armor, others in cuirasses of Roman leather, others in barbaric simarres and turbans, others in Vene- tian caps and dalmatics, some with legs and arms naked, and one wholly so except a mantle over his thighs and a handkerchief on his head, with splendid contrasts of light and dark, with a variety, a brilliancy, an indescribable seductiveness of light reflected in the polished depths of the armor, diffused over lustrous figurings of silks, imprisoned in the warm shadows oi the flesh and enlivened by the carnations, the greens and the rayed yellows of the opulent materials. Not a figure is there that does not act and act all over ; not a fold of drapery, not a tone of the bod}^ is there that does not add to the universal dash and brilliancy. A woman supported against a pedestal falls back in order to see better ; she is so animated that her whole body trembles, her eyes flash and her mouth opens. Architectural forms in the background and men on the terraces or clinging to columns add the amplitude of space to the scenic richness. We can breathe freely there, and the breath we take is more inspiring than elsewhere ; it is the flame of hfe as it flashes forth in gleaming lucidity fi'om the adult and perfect brain of a man of genius ; here all quivers and palpitates in the joyousness of light, and of beauty. There is no example of such luxuriousness and success of invention ; one must see for himseK the boldness and ease of the jet, the natural impulse of genius and temperament, the lively spon- taneous creation, the necessity of expressing and the satisfaction in rendering his idea instantly unconscious of rules, the sure and sudden dash of an instinct which culminates at once and without effort in perfeoi 316 VENETIAN AKT. action as the bird flies and the horse runs. Attitudes types and costumes of every kind, with all their peculiarities and divergencies flooded their minds and fell into harmony in one sublime moment. The curved back of a woman, a cuirass gleaming with light, an indolent nude form in transparent shadow, rosy flesh with the pulsating amber skin, the deep scarlet of careless folds, the medley of heads, arms and legs, the reflection of tones brightened and transformed by mutual illumination, all disgorged in a mass Hke water spouting from a surcharged conduit. Sudden and complete concentrations are inspiration itseK, and perhaps there is not in the world one fuller and more animated than this one. I believe that before having seen this work one can have no idea of the human imagination. I set aside ten other pictures that are in the Academy, a " Saint Agnes," a " Resurrection of Christ," a " Death of Abel" and an " Eve," a superb and solid sensual form with rude contours, stoutly built, the legs undulating, the head animal and expressionless but blooming and full of life, so strong and so joyous in its tranquillity, so richly mottled with lights and shadows that here, even more than in Rubens, one feels the full poesy of nudity and of flesh. It is in the churches and in the public monuments that he is to be understood ; there is scarcely one of these that does not contain vast pic- tures by him, — an "Assumption" in the Jesuits', a " Crucifixion" and I know not how many other cfin- vases in San Giovanni e Paolo, the "Marriage of Cana" at Santa Maria della Salute, four colossal paint- ings at Santa Maria delF Orto, the " Forty Martyrs," the " Shower of Manna," the " Last Supper," the " Martyrdom of St. Stephen" at San Giorgio, twenty pictures and ceilings, a "Paradise" twenty-three feet high and seventy-seven feet long in the Ducal Palace, and finally, at the Church of San-Rocco and at the Scuola TINTORETTO. 317 of San-Bocoo, ^vllich seem like liis OAvn galleries, forty pictures, a few of them gigantic and capable together of covering the walls of two square saloons in the Louvre. Veritably we do not know him in Europe. The European galleries contain scarcely anything by him, the few" examples they have acquired being smaD or of minor importance. Save three or four scenes in the Ducal Palace he has been pooily engraved ; ex- cept a " Cruciiixion" b}' Augustino Carrache his great works have not been engraved. He is disproportionate in everything, in dimensions as well as in his concep- tions. Academic minds at the end of the sixteenth century decried him as extravagant and negligent ; the prodigious and the superhuman in his genius prove distasteful to minds of a common stamp or fond of re- pose. But the truth is no man like him is or has been seen ; he is unique in his w^ay like Michael Angelo, Bubens and Titian. Let him be called extravagant, impetuous and improvisator ; let people complain oi the blackness of his coloring, of his figures topsy- turvy, of the confusion of his groups, of his hasty brush, of the exhaustion and the mannerism which sometimes lead him to introduce old metal into his new casting ; let all the defects of his qualities be adduced against him, I am willing ; — but a furnace like this, so ardent, so overflowing, with such outbursts and flaming coruscations, with such an immense jet of sparks, with such luminous flashes so sudden and multiplied, with such a surprising and constant volume of smoke and flame has never been encountered here below. I know not, indeed, how to speak of him ; I cannot describe his paintings, so vast are they and so numer- ous. It is the inward condition of his mind that must be enlarged upon. It seems to me that, in him, we dis- cover a unique state of things, the lightning-burst of inspiration. The term is strong, but it corresponds to ascertained facts of which examples may be cited. Id 818 VENETIAN ART. certain extreme moments, when confronting great dan^ ger, in any sudden crisis, man sees distinctly, in a flashy with terrible intensity, whole years of his life, com- plete incidents and scenes and often a fragment of the imaginary world : the recollections of the asphyxiated and the accounts of persons escaping from drowning, the revelations of suicides and of opium-eaters,^ and of the Indian Pur anas all confirm this. The activity of the brain suddenly increased ten or a hundredfold causes the mind to live more in this brief foreshorten- ing of time than in all the rest of life put together. It is true that it commonly issues from this subhme state of hallucination exhausted and morbid ; but when the temperament is sufficiently vigorous to support the electric shock without flagging, men Uke Luther, St. Ignatius, St. Paul and all the great visionaries accom- plish works transcending the powers of humanity. Such are the transports of creative imagination in the breasts of gTeat artists ; with less of a counterpoise they were as strong with Tintoretto as with the greatest. If a proper idea be formed of this involuntary and ex- traordinary state in a tragic temperament like his, and of the colorist senses such as he possessed, we can see how everything else follows. He never selects ; his vision imposes itself on him ; an imaginative scene to him is a reahty ; with one dash, he copies it instantaneously, along with whatever in it is odd, surprising, vast and multitudinous ; he ex- tracts a portion from nature and transfers it bodily to his canvas, with all the force and abruptness of a spon- taneous creation knowing neither combination nor hesitancy. It is not two or three personages he paints but a scene, a fragment of life, an entire landscape and a populous architecture. His " Marriage of Cana" is a complete, gigantic dining-hall, with ceilings, windows, * " Confessions of an Opium Eater," by De Quincey. TINTORETTO. 319 doors, floors, domestics, an exit into side-rooms, the guests in two files around the receding table, the men on one side and the women on the other, the two rows of heads appearing like the two lines of trees of an ave- nue, and, at the far end, Christ, small and effaced, on account of the multitude and the distance. His " Pis- cine probatique" at the Scuola San-Eocco is a hospi- tal ; half-naked women stretched on a sheet which peo- ple are hfting, others on couches with bare legs and breasts, one in a tub entirely stripped and Christ in the midst of them among fevers and ulcers. His " Shower of Manna" is an encampment of people with all the petty details of life, every diversity of landscape and all the gi'andeur of illimitable distances : here is a camel and his driver, there a man near a table with a pestle, in another place two women washing, another young woman listening and stooping to mend a basket, others seated near a tree, others turning a reel with sheets at- tached to it to collect the manna and a grand draped old man in consultation with Moses. In his exuberance as in his genius he surpasses his own age and approxi- mates to ours. His pictures seem to be '* illustrations; " only he produces in a length of forty feet, with figures as large as life, what we try to do in the space of a foot with figures no bigger than one's finger. Life in general interests him more than the particular life of one being ; he discards picturesque and plastic rules, subordinating the personage to the whole and parts to the effect. He is impelled to render, not this or that man standing or lying, but a moment m nature or in history. He is invaded as if from without ; he is over- powered by an image which takes possession of him, torments him and in which ho has faith. Hence his unprecedented originality. Compared with him all painters are self-copyists ; you are always astonished before his pictures ; you ask yourself where he went for that, into what unknown and fantastic but 320 VENETIAN ART. nevertheless real world. In the "Last Supper" the central figure is a large kneeling servant, her head in shadow and her shoulder luminous ; she holds a platter of beans and is bringing in dishes ; a cat attempts ta climb up her basket. Eound about are buffets, domes- tics, ewers and disciples in a perpendicular file border* ing a long table. It is a supper, a veritable evening re- past, which is for him the essential idea. Above the table glimmers a lamp while a blue light from the moon falls on their heads ; but the supernatural enters on all sides : in the background by an opening in the sky and a choir of radiant angels ; on the right by a swarm of pale angels whirling about in the nocturnal obscurity. "With extraordinary boldness and force of verisimilitude the two worlds divine and human, merge into each other and form but one. When this man reads in the Evangelists the technical term it is the corporeal ob- ject with all its details which forcibly impresses him and which he forcibly renders. St. Joseph was a car- penter ; instantly, in order to depict the Annunciation, he represents the actual house of a carpenter, — on the outside a shed in order to work in the open air, the disorder of a workshop, bits of wood and carpentry tumbled about, piled up, adjusted, leaning against the walls, saws, planes, cords, a workman busy ; within, a large bed with red curtains, a bottomless chair, a child's vvillow cradle, the wife in a red petticoat, a vigorous, amazed and frightened plebeian. A Fleming could not have more accurately imitated the confusion and vulgarity of common life. But passion always accompanies these intense and circumstantial visions. Gabriel and a flock of tumultuous whirling angels dart athwart the door and window ; the unfinished domicile seems to be shattered by the shock ; it is the fury of an invasion ; the pigeons betake themselves in full flight to their own tenement ; they pitch all together upon the Virgin. You may judge by this frenzied and TINTOKETTO. 321 disproportionate activity the irresistible irruption witb which tumultuous ideas are unloosed in his mind. No painter has thus loved, felt and rendered action. All his figures dart and re-dart forward and backward. There is a "Resurrection" by him in which no figure is iu a state of equilibrium ; angels descend head foremost from above ; Christ and the saints swim in the air ; the atmosphere is a resistant and palpable fluid which sustains bodies and allows them every atti- tude as water does the fishes. When he chances to paint a violent scene like the " Bronze Serpent" or a "Massacre of the Innocents" it is a delirium. The women freely seize the swords of the executioners, roll down precipitated from the heights of a terrace, strain their infants to their breasts with an animal gripe and fall upon them covering them with their bodies. Five or six bodies, one on top of the other, women and children, wounded, dying and living, form a mound. The space is covered with a mass of heads and limbs, and torsos falling, running, struggling and staggering as if a hurly-burly of inebriates ; it is the inf imate bacchanalianism of despair. Near this, on a mountain cliff dog-headed serpents forage amongst a monstrous heap of prostrated men. One, already black, having died howling, lies on his back his limbs swollen with the venom, his muscles contorted with convulsions, the breast strained and projecting and the head cast back- ward ; others, in the last agony, bleed and writhe, some on the flank, others erect and stiff, with bowed head, and others with their thighs drawn up and their arms contorted, all under livid lights contending with deathly shadows, rolling, heaving and pitching like a human avalanche down the side of a precipice. The artist is on his own domain ; he wanders about grandly in the realm of the impossible. He sees too much at once, forty, sixty and eighty personages and their sur- roundings, aroused, comm^'uglod ;niaJ3EllG0. 32a Eoch among tlio Prisouers." They are in a vast som- bre dungeon, a sort of antique ergastulum, where iron bars, stocks and straining chains rack and dislocate limbs through slow and prolonged turning. The saint appears ; a miserable creature fastened by the neck raises toward him his twisted head ; another, from the bottom of a grated fosse, fixes his face against the bars ; spines reddened and rigid with muscles, breasts of the color of rust, heads brown like lions' manes, white, lu- minous beards appear in the midst of sepulchral ob- scurity ; but higher up, in the duskiness of the shadow, float exquisite figures, silvery silken robes, tunics of pale violet and blonde radiant hair, the visitation of an angelic choir. After having passed through the church and the two stories of the Scuola there still remains a grand hall to visit, the Albergo ; the walls and ceilings here are also tapestried with paintings by Tintoretto. It is in vain to say to yourseK that you are weary, and to accuse the painter of exuberance and excess, to feel that these forty immense pictures were executed too rapidly and rather indicated than perfected, that he presumes on his own and the spectator's powers. You enter, and you find strength left, because he imparts it to you in spite of yourself. Virgins and women thrown backward swim on the panels of the ceiling, their ample beauty, the magnificent rotundity of their flesh bathed in shadow, being displayed with inexpressible richness of tone. A " Christ bearing the Cross" develops itself on the winding escarpment of a mountain ; Christ, with a rope around his neck, is dragged on in front, while the sav- age procession scales the rocks mth the sorrowful and furious dash of a " Passion" by Kubens.* On the other side the meek Clirist stands before Pilate, and the long white shroud wholly enveloping him contrasts its The same scene in the Brussels Musee, by Rubens. 334 VENETIAN AllT. funereal color with the black shadows of the architec* ture and with the blood-red vestments of the assistants. Over the door a ruddy corpse lies stiffened between the soldiers and the scarlet robes of the judges ; but these are merely accompaniments. An entire section of the hall, a wall forty feet long and high in proportion, disap- pears beneath a " Crucifixion," ten scenes in one, and so balanced as to constitute a single composition ; eighty figures grouped and spaced, a plateau strewn with rocks at the base of a mountain, trees, towers, a bridge, cavaliers, stony crests, and in the distance, a vast brownish horizon. Never did eye embrace such en- sembles, or combine the like effects. In the centre Christ is nailed to the upraised cross, and his drooping head is obscure in the dim radiance of his nimbus. A ladder rises behind the cross, and executioners are climbing up and passing to each other the sponge. At the foot of the cross the disciples and women standing extend their arms, and those kneeling sob and weep ; the Yirgin swoons, and all these forms of bending, tot- tering, falling women under grand red and blue draper- ies of every hue, with a flash of sunlight on a cheek or a chin, produce a funereal pomp of the most imposing character. Like a grandiose harmony sustaining a rich and penetrating voice, surrounding crowds and in- cidents accompany the principal scene with their tragic variety and splendor. On the left, one of the two thieves is already bound to his cross and is being raised up ; the upper part of his body glows in the light, and the rest is in shadow. Five or six executioners strain at the ropes and support those who are climbing up, pulling and pushing with all the might and force of the rigid muscular machinery. The light falls across their rosy and vixjed cassocks, on the brown tendons of their necks and on the swollen veins of their foreheads. Their implements are there, axes, picks, wedges, a mas- sive ladder, and, at the head of the cross, in a beautifu) "the ckucifixion." ?J35 luminous sliadow, an indifferent spectator leaning over his horse's neck and looking ou. — On the other side, with equal splendor and diversity, is displaj^ed the third exe- cution, like one chorus corresponding to another clio- L'us. The cross lies on the ground, and the victim ia being attached to it ; one executioner brings ropes, an- other, a superb, athletic fellow, expanding his twisted ohoulder, turns an auger in one of its arms ; at the foot uf the plateau sits an old amateur of such spectacles ; it interests him ; he bends forward half reclining in his red mantle, and near him, on an iron-gray horse, a sort of ruffian in a cap, a tall, red scamp, fully illuminated, leans over in order to make a serviceable suggestion. — Beyond these three scenes, there rolls in tiers on five or six planes, with an innumerable variety of tints and forms, the broad and pompous harmony of the multitude, assistants of every kind, petty accessory incidents, dig- gers excavating the graves of the criminals, crossbowmen in a hollow drawing lots for the tunics, priests in grand robes, men-at-arms in cuirasses, cavaliers boldly draped and posed, simarres of Jews and armor of gentlemen, spirited horses in neutral and auroral trappings, wo- men's orange aud gi'een skirts, contrasts of delicate and intense tones, popular visages and chivalric brows, easy and complicated attitudes, all in such amplitude of light, with such a triumphant expansion of genius and such perfect representation that one goes away half stunned, as from a too rich and powerful concert, all sense of the proportion of things gone and wondering if one ought to have faith in his own sensations. May \st. — I have just purchased the engraving of Augustino Carrache ; it only gives the skeleton of the picture and even falsifies it. I returned to-day to see the picture again. He is a little less impressive on the second inspection ; the effect of the whole, that of the first sight, is too essential in the eyes of Tinto- retto ; he subordinates the rest to these, his hand is too 826 VENETIAN AKT. prompt, lie too readily follows out his first conception In tliis respect lie is superior to tlie masters ; he has only done two complete things, his mythological subjects in the Dueal Palace and his " Miracle of St. Mark." May 2c?.— Yf hen, after quitting Venetian art, one tries to gather up his impressions into a complete whole, he is sensible only of one emotion, and that is like the sweet sonorous echo of perfect enjoyment. Pait of a naked foot issuing from silk mottled with gold, a pearl whose milky brightness quivers on touching a snowy neck, the ruddy warmth of life peering out be- neath transparent shadow, the gradations and alter- nations of clear and sombre surfaces following the muscular undulations of the body, the opposition and agreement of two flesh-tones lost in each other and transformed by interchanging reflections, a vacillating light fringing a piece of dark metal, a purple spot enlivened by a green tone, in brief, a rich harmony due to colors manipulated, opposed and composed as a concert proceeds from various instruments, and which fills the eye as the concert fills the ear, — this is the one peculiar endowment. By this inventiveness forms are vivified ; alongside of these others seem abstract. Else- where the body has been separated from its surround- ings, it has been simpKfied and reduced ; it has been forgotten that the contour is only the limit of a color, that for the eye color is the object itself. For, so soon as the eye is sensitive it feels in the object, not alone a diminution of brilliancy proportioned to its receding planes, but again a multitude and a mingling of tones, a general blueness augmenting with distance, an infinity of reflections which other bright objects intersect and overlie with diverse colors and intensities, a constant vibration of the interposing atmosphere where float imperceptible irridescences, where there are growing striae quivering and speckled with innumerable atoms, and in which fugitive appearances are incessantly dis- THE SrilUT OF VENETIAN ART. 327 solving and vanisliing. The exterior as well as the interior of beings is only movement, change and trans- formation, and their complicated agitation is life. Starting fi-om this the Venetians vivify and harmonize the infinite tones uniting to compose a tint ; they make perceptible the mutual contagion by which bodies com- municate their reflections ; they augment the power by which an object receives, returns, colors, tempers and harmonizes the innumerable luminous rays strildng on it, like a man who straining soft cords enhances their vibrating qualities in order to convey sounds to the ear which our coarser ears had not yet detected. They develop and thus exalt the visible existence of things ; out of the real they fashion the ideal : hence a newborn poesy. Let there be added to this that of form, and that genius through which they invent a complete spontaneous, original, intermediary type between that of the Florentines and that of the Flemings, exquisite in softness and voluptuousness, sublime in force and in inspiration, capable of furnishing giants, athletes, kings, empresses, porters, courtezans, the most real and the most ideal figures, in such a way as to unite extremes and assemble in one personage the most ex- quisite charm of sensibility and the most grandiose majesty, a grace almost as seductive as that of Cor- reggio, but with richer health and more vigorous ampli- tude, a fiow of life as fresh and almost as broad as that of Eubens, but with more beautiful forms and a better regulated rhythm, an energy almost as colossal as that of Michael Angelo, but without pamful severity or re- volting despair : — then may one judge of the place which the Venetians occupy among painters and I do not know if I yield to personal inclination in preferring them to any. BOOK YII. LOMBARDY. CHAPTEK I. \nERONA.— THE AMPHITHEATEE.— CHURCHES.— IXTMBAUD STYLE OI AllCHITECTURE.— THE DUOMO.— SAN ZENONE.— THE SCALIGERS.- THE PIAZZA.— THE MUSEO. On leaying Venice the train seems to pass over the surface of the water ; the sea glows on the right and on the left and ripples up within two paces of the wheels ; the sandbanks are multiplied amidst the shining pools. The lagunes diminish ; great ditches absorb whatever remains of the water and drain the soil. The immense plain becomes green and is covered with vegetation ; the crops are sprouting young and fresh, and the vines are budding on the trees while, on the sloping declivities, pretty country-houses warm themselves in the mid-day sunshine. Meanwhile, to the north, between the great verdant expanse and the grand blue dome overhead, the Alpine wall bristles up dark with its rocks, towers and bastions, shattered like the ruins of an enclosure demoUshed by artillery, the pale clouds of smoke issuing from their anfractu- osities and their crests indented with snow. An hour more and we enter Yerona, a melancholy provincial town paved with cobble-stones and neglected. Many of the streets are deserted; alongside of the bridges are piles of ordure descending into the stream. Bemains of old sculptures and of tarnished arabesques VEIIONA. 32ft run here and tliere along the facades ; the once pros- perous air of the city is evident but it is now faliun. Beneath a parasite crust of sLeds and sliops an old Koman amphitheatre, the largest and bust preserved after those of Nismes and Home, uplifts its vigorous curves. Lately it contained fifty thousand spectators. When it possessed its wooden galleries I suppose it might have held seventy thousand ; there was room enough for the entire population of the place. In structure and in use the amphitheatre is the peculiar sign of Koman genius. Its enormous stones, here six feet long and three feet wide, its gigantic round arches, its stories of arcades one supporting the other, are capable, if left to themselves, of enduring to the day of judgment. Ai'chitecture, thus understood, possesses the solidity of a natural production. This edifice, seen fi'om above, looks like an extinct crater. If one desires to build for eternity it must be in this fashion. On the other hand, however, this monument of grandiose com- mon sense is an institution of permanent murder. We know that it steadily afforded wounds and death as a spectacle to the citizens ; that, on the election of a duumvir or an sedile, this bloody sport formed the prin- cipal interest and the prime occupation of a municipal city ; that the candidates and the magistrates multi- plied them at then* own cost to win popular favor ; that benefactors of the city bequeathed vast sums to the curia to perpetuate it ; that, in a paltry town like Pom- peii, a grateful duumvir caused thirty-five pairs of gladiators to contend at one representation ; that a polished, learned and humane man attended these massacres as we of to-day attend a play ; that this di- version was regular, universal, authorized and fashion- able and that people resorted to the amphitheatre as we now resort to the playhouse, the club or the cafe. A species of being is there encountered with which we are no longer familiar, that of the pagan reared in the ^^^ LOMBABDY. gjmnasium and on the battle-field, that is to say, ac- customed to cultivating his body and to conquering men, pushing to extremes his admirable physical and militant institutions and, traversing the activity of the palestrum and of civic heroism, ending in the indolence of the baths and in the ferocities of the circus. Every ciniization has its own degeneracy as well as its own vitalizing forces. For us christians, spiritualists, who preach peace and cultivate our understanding, we have the miseries of a cerebral and bourgeois existence, the enervation of the muscles, the excitement of the brain, small rooms on the fourth story, our sedentary and ar- tificial habits, our saloons and our theatres. This amphitheatre is simply a relic : traces of Rome are scant in the north of Italy ; the originality and the interest of the place consist of its mediaeval monu- ments. The impression it makes on the mind is an odd one, because the Italian mediseval epoch is mixed and ambiguous. Most of the churches, Santa-Anasta- sia, San Fermo-Maggiore, the Duomo, San Zenone, are of a peculiar style called Lombard, intermediary between the Italian and the Gothic styles, as if the Latin and the German artist had met in order to oppose and har- monize their ideas in the same edifice. But the work is genuine ; in every monument of a primitive era we realize the lively invention of a budding spirit. Among these diverse churches the Duomo may be taken as the type ; this edifice, like the old basilicas, is a house sur- mounted by a smaller one and both presenting a gable frontage. We recognize the antique temple raised for the purpose of supporting another on the top of it. Straight lines ascend in pairs, parallel as in later archi- tecture, in order to be capped with angles. These lines, however, are more extended, and the angles are sharper than in the latin architecture ; five superposea belfries render them still more attenuated. The new spirit evidently appreciates less a solid posture than a VERONA. 331 bold flight ; the old forms are reduced by it and con- verted to new uses. The ranges of columns and the two borderings of arcades let into the facade are sim- ply small ornaments, the vestiges of an abandoned art, like the rudimentary bones of the arm in the whale, or in the dolphin. On all sides we detect the ambiguous spirit of the twelfth century, the remains of Roman tradition, the bloom of a new invention, the elegance of an architecture still preserved and the gropings of the new-born sculpture. A projecting porch repeats the simple lines of the general arrangement and its small columns, supported by griffins, rise above and are joined into each other like sections of cordage. This porch is original and charming ; but its crouching figures and its groups around the Virgin are hydro- cephalous monkeys. Gothic forms prevail in the interior, not yet complete, but indicated and already christian. I cannot get rid of the idea that ogives, arcades and foliations are alone capable of imparting mystic sublimity to a church ; if they are lacking the church is not christian ; it becomes so as soon as they appear. This one is already mourn- fully gi'ave like the first act of a tragedy. Clusters of small columns combine in reddish pillars, ascend into capitals bound with a triple cro\vn of flowers, spread out into arcades embroidered with twining wreaths and finally end in the wall of the flank in a sort of terminal tuft. On the flank the ogive of the chapel is enveloped in a covering of leaves and complicated ornaments joined together at the top in a spire and surmounted by a statuette. Most of the figures have the grave candor and the sincere and too marked expression of the fifteenth century. A choir in the background, built by San-Micheli, protrudes its belt of ionic columns even into the nave. The various ages of the church are thus shown in its various ornaments ; its structure, however, and its grand forms still secure to the whole 333 LOMBAEDY. the sober simplicity and bright originality of primitive invention, and there is pleasure in contemplating a healthy architectural creation belonging to a distinct species and found nowhere else. On trying to define the ruling type in other churches resembling this one we find the two superposed gables of Pisa and Sienna and the pointed canopies which Pisa and Sienna lack. This combination is unique : these canopies, over full walls and elegant lines, almost black and covered with rusty scales, bristle against the blue sky with their ferruginous points as if they were the remains of so many fossil carcasses. Sometimes a bevy of canopies crowd around the central cone or are perched on all sides on the crests and on the angles of the roofs, the ruddy tone of the bricks of which the edifice is built adding to the singularity of their rough and deadened forms. It is a unique growth like that of a pineapple slov/ly elongated and incrusted with smoky ochre. It is one that is peculiar to the country. Between the Roman arcade, now disappearing, and the Gothic ogive just indicating itself, it gathered around it the sympa- thies of men for two or three centuries. They discov- ered it at the first step they made out of savage Kfe and many are the traits which render visible the barbarity from which they issued. The portal of Santa Anastasia displays heads one half as large as the body ; others are without necks or have them dislocated ; almost all are grotesque ; a Christ on the cross has the broken and bent-back paws of a frog. — Centuries, however, in their progress, dragged art out of its swaddling-clothes and, in later chapels, the sculpture becomes adults Santa Anastasia is filled with figures of the fifteenth century, occasionally a little clumsy, stiff and too real, but so expressive that the perfection of the masters appears languid alongside of their animated deformity. In the choir a b^^sh of thorns and large expanded flow- ers, twenty-five feet high, envelop a tomb in whicl VEIIONA. 83c stand rude figures of men-at-arms. In the Miniscalcc chapel, amidst interhicings of elegant arabesques, you see four standing statuettes placed in couples above each other between the red columns suj^porting an entablature : they are those of a young man, a some- what meagre, candid 3'oung girl, and two bald-headed doctors roughly chiselled the whole similar to the figures of Perughio. The chapel Pellegrini, wainscoted entirely with terra-cotta, is a large sculptured picture in compartments, where evangehcal subjects unite and separate with admirable richness and originality of imagination ; two files of single figures, each under an ornamented ogive canopy, divide the various scenes, each of which is enclosed in a fi'ame of spiral columns with acanthus capitals. In this graceful and overflo\v- ing decoration, among these fancies half gothic half greek, we find, along with the beautiful groupings of the new art, the sincerest and simplest expressions, virgins of infantile innocence and beaming beauty, saintly women weeping with the touching abandonment of genuine gi'ief, noble, erect young forms displaying the sentiment of human vitality with the sincerity of the recent invention and a cuirassed St. Michael as spir- ited and simple as an ancient ephebos. — Never was sculpture more fecund, more spontaneous and, in my opinion, more beautiful than in the fifteenth century. We take a cab and drive to the end of the town, to San Zenone, the most curious of these churches, begun by a son of Charlemagne, restored by the German em- peror Otho L, but belonging almost entirely to the twelfth century.* Some portions, as, for instance, the sculptures of a door, belong to the more ancient times ; except at Pisa I have seen none so barbarous. The Christ at the pillar looks like a bear mounting a tree ; the judges, the executioners and the personages belong- * The spiiL- is of ihe year 1045. ^^^ LOMBARDY. ing to other biblical stories resemble the grosB cari- catures of clumsy Germans in their overcoats. In an- other place Christ on his throne has no skull, the entire face being absorbed bj the chin ; tlie wondering, pro- jecting eyes are those of a frog, while around him the angels with their wings are bats with human heads. The heads throughout are enormous, disproportionate and pitiful ; below badly jointed Kmbs toss about float- ing bellies. These figures all swim through the air on different planes in the most insensate manner, as if the sculptor or founder aimed to excite a laugh. To this low level did art fall during the Carlovingian decadence and the Hungarian invasions. — In the interior of the church you follow the strange and whimsical gropings of an experimental mind, catching glimpses of daylight now and then from its obscure depths. The crypt, belonging to the ninth century, low and lugubrious, is a forest of columns crowned with shapeless figures ; sculptures still more shapeless cover an altar. To this damp cavern people resorted to pray at the saint's tomb for the expulsion of devastators and of the yelling cav- alry which, wherever it passed, left a desert behind it. Higher up in the church, a curious altar is supported by crouched brutes resembling lions ; from their bodies of red marble spring four small columns of the same material which, half way up, twine and interlace around each other like serpents, and then, once knotted, resume their rectilinear projection up to the corinthian capital. Farther on Christ and his apostles in colored marble, frescoes of the fourteenth century, a St. George with his heraldic buckler, a Magdalen in drapery of her own hair, range themselves along the wall, some lank and grotesque like wooden dolls, others grave, enveloped in the grand folds of their robes and with hieratic ele- vation and austerity. How slow progress is, and how many centuries are necessary for man to comprehen(5 the human figure ! VERONA. 335 The architecture, more simple, is more precocious. It is satisfied with a few straight or curved lines, a few symmetrical and clearly defined planes ; it does not exact, like sculpture, knowledge of receding rotundi- ties and a studj' of the complications and reliefs of the oval. Uncultivated natures confined to a few powerful sentiments can be afiected by and reveal themselves through it ; it is perhaps their proper medium of ex- pression. In half-barbarous ages indeed, in the times of Philippe Augustus and Herodotus, it obtained its original forms, while complete civilization, instead of sustaining it and developing it like other arts has rather impoverished or corrupted it. Within as with- out, San Zenone is grand in character, austere and sim- ple : we here realize the Roman basilica making itself Christian. The central nave rests on round columns whose barbarous capitals, enveloped with foliage, lions, dogs and serpents, sustain a line of circular ar- cades ; on these arcades rises a gTand naked w^all bear- ing the arch. Thus far the structure is Latin ; but the nave, through its extreme height, fills the soul with a religious emotion. Its curious ceiling consists of a triple roof trellised with dark wood and inlaid \^dth httle squares starred with white and gold, its super- posed hollows extending along with a wdld and unex- pected fancy. Beneath it, the pavement, lower down, connects the portal and the choir by high steps pro- vided with balustrades, while the differences of level break up and complicate all the Hues. The capricious imagination of the middle-ages begins to introduce itself into the regularity of ancient architecture in order to distui^b planes, multiply forms and trarspose effects. The same imagination reigns, but this time sovereign and complete, within an iron railing situated near Santa Maria I'xintica, and which is the most curious monument in Verona, Here are the tombs of the an* 23G LOMBARDT. cient sovereigns of the city, tlie Scaligers, wlio, eitliei by turns or always, tyrants and warriors, politicians and sages, assassins and exiles, great men and fratri- cides, furnislied, like tlie princes of Ferrara, Milan and Padua, examples of tliat powerful and immoral genius peculiar to Italy and which Machiavelli has described in his " Prince " or displayed in his Life of Castruccio. The first five tombs display the simplicity and heavi- ness of heroic times. It seems that man after having combated, slain and fouuded demands only of the sep- ulchre a spot for repose ; the hollow stone that receives his bones is as solid and worn as the iron armor which protected his flesh. It consists of an enormous and massive tub formed out of a naked rock, a single red block, and placed on three short supports of marble, A single slab, thick and without ornaments, forms the cover, as Hamlet says " the ponderous jaws" of the tomb. This is a true funereal monument, a monstrous "ude coffer, built for eternity. Out of this savage world, in which the ferocities of Ecclin and his destroyers were let loose, an art appears. Dante and Petrarch were welcomed at this court, now learned and magnificent ; the Gothic style, which from the mountain-tops descends on Milan, and on all sides impregnates Italian architecture, displays itself here pure and complete in the monuments of its latest lords. Two of these sepulchres, especially that of Cane Signo- rio (1375) are as precious in their way as the cathedrals of Milan and Assisi. The rich and delicate comming- ling of twining, excavated and sharp forms, the trans- formation of dull matter into a filagree of lace, into the multiple and the complex, is the aspiration of this new taste. At the foot of the memorial small columns with curious capitals connect through a sort of armorial turban in order to bear on a platform the storied tomb and the sleeping statue of the dead. From this basis springs a circle of other small columns whose arcades laced VEROI^A. 337 with trefoils, join in a dome crowned with foliated lan- terns and with canopies tapering upward and cluster- ing together hke the vegetation of thorns. On the sum- mit, Cane Signorio, seated on his horse, seems the ter- minal statue of a rich specimen of the jeweller's art. Processions of small sculjptured figures deck the tomb. Six statuettes in armor, with bare heads, cover the edges of the platform, and each of the niches of the second story contains its figure of an angel. This crowd of figures and this efflorescence rise pyramidi- cally hke a bouquet in a vase while the sky shines through the infinite interstices of the scaffolding. In order to complete the impression each tomb by itself, as well as the entire enclosure, is shut in by one of those railings, so original and so intricate, in which medigeval art delighted, a sort of thread of arabesques wrought with four-leafed trefoils, united with halberd irons and crowned with triple-pointed thorn-leaves. It is to this side, toward the prodigality and interlacing of light capricious forms, that the imagination wholly turned. Figures, in fact, although well-proportioned, display nothing of the ideal. Cane is simply a laborious- ly exercised warrior. The statuettes in armor have that air of a grave sacristan so frequent in medijeval sculptures. The Virgin, sculptured in relief on the tomb, is a simple, gross, stolid peasant-woman and the infant Christ has the big head, lank limbs and protuberant belly of actual bantlings that do nothing else but suck, sleep and cry. The artist knows only how to copy the human form servilely and dolefully ; his invention ex- pends itself in other directions. I was thinking by contrast of a double Benaissance tomb which I had just seen in the .sacristy of San-FerDio-Maggiore, that of Jerome Turriano, so simple, so elegant, so riclily and so healthily imaginative ; where small fluted col- umns form a medium space between medium masses, where the whiteness of marble is enhanced by the dim- 838 LOMBARDT. mer tiuts of bronze, where sphinxes, fawns and njmphi[ in bas-relief caper amidst the flowers. One cannot fail to realize that mediaeval art so creative and so vig- orous, has something of the strained and divergent. The truth is it is a morbid art : a cheerful and healthy Uiind could not accommodate itself to such a minute, intricate and fragile ornamentation which seems so inca- pable of self-endurance and which demands a sheath to protect it. We require monuments to be solidly based and to have a consistency of their own. The imagina- tion tires at being always kept suspended in the air, diverted in its flight, caught by sharp angles and perched on the points of needles. We retrace our steps to see the Piazza dei Signori, where there is a charming little Benaissance palace, resting on a portico of arcades and Corinthian columns. We enjoy the finesse of its small columns and the elegant rotundities of its balus- trades. The eyes wander over the sculptures twining around the coins and cornices of the windows ; branches loaded with leaves, stately flowers springing out of an amphora, Roman cuirasses, cornucopias, medallions, every form and every emblem an artist would like to surround himself with in order to make of his life a fete. We contemplate the two statues in the shell niches, a Virgin like the Madonna of the " Last Judg- ment," gathering herself up and turning her shoulder with all the charm of Florentine finesse. I sup- pose that this constitutes the pleasure of travelling; one's ideas are reconsidered and confirmed and de- veloped and constantly corrected according as new cities present to the mind new aspects of the same objects. Still one becomes weary. I saw too many pictures at Venice to dwell on those in this place. There is, how- ever, a Pinacotheca at the Palazzo Pompeii filled with the works of the Veronese masters. A number of the VALUE OF COSTUME. ^^9 early painters, Falconetto, Turodi, Crivelli, are ranged in the order of their epoch. One of them, Paolo Mo- rando, who died in 1522, fills an entire room with hia works, somewhat stiff, realistic and finished to excess, in which, among the figures copied from hfe, are beauti- ful angels crowned with laurels and announcing the advent of ideal form, whilst a glow of color and skiKul gradations of tints indicate Yenetian taste. All these painters should be studied ; they are the beginnings of a local flora ; — but there are days when every effort to fix the attention is disagreeable, when one is only capa- ble of enjoying himself. One turns away fi"om the pre- cursors for two or three of the pictures by the masters. There is one by Bonifazio, representing the rendition of Yerona to the Doge, brilliant and decorative, in which the fi^eest imitation of actual life is enUvened and embelKshed vdth every magnificence of color. Seignors in the costumes of the time of Francis I., in lustrous white silk and decked with flowers, appear on one side of the Doge, whilst on the other sit the councillors in the waving pomp of their grand red robes. Costume, in those days, is so fine that it alone affords material for pictures ; in every epoch it is the most spontaneous and most significant of the works of art ; for it indicates the way in which man comprehends the beautiful and how he desires to adorn his life ; rely upon it that if it is not picturesque, picturesque tastes are wanting. When peo- ple truly love pictures they begin to depict their ow^n per- sons ; this is why the age of dress-coats and black trow- sers is poorly qualified for the arts of design. Compare our vestments of a respectable undertaker or of a practi- cal engineer to the superb portrait of Pasio Guariento by Paul Yeronese (1556). He stands in steel armor rayed with black lines and damasked with gold. His casque, gauntlets and lance are by his side. He is a m^tn of Action, valiant and gay, although quite old; his beard S40 LOMBaBDY. is gray, but his cheeks possess the somewhat vinoua ^ints of jovial habits. His mihtary pomp and his sim- ple expression harmonize ; everything about the man holds together, within and without ; he fashions his own costume, furniture and architecture, his entire out- side decoration according to his inward necessities , but in the long-run the decoration reacts on him. I am satisfied that an armor like this would convert any man into a heroic ox. To fight well, to drink well and dine well and to display himself superbly on horseback was all he cared to do. A cavalier's Kfe and pic- turesque sensations absorbed him entirely ; he did not, like us closet-folks, require a learned subtle psychology ; it would have set him yawning ; he was himself too slightly complicated to incline to our analyses. On ac- count of this the central art of the century is not litera- ture but painting. — In this art Yeronese, like Van Dyck, reaches that final moment when primitive impulse and energy begin to be tempered by the breath of worldly ease and dignity. People still sometimes wear the great sword but use the rapier ; they don at need the solid battle-armor but more willingly deck themselves with the rich pourpoint and the laces of the court ; a gentlemanly elegance comes to transform and brighten ilie ancient energy of the soldier. The Venetian like ixiC Fleming paints that noble and poetic society which, placed on the confines of the feudal and the modern ages, preserves the seigneurial spirit without maintain- ing gothic rudeness and attains to the urbanity of the palace without falling into the insipidity of drawing- room politeness. By the side of Titian, Giorgione and Tintoretto, Veronese seems a delicate cavalier amongst robust plebeians. Here, in a fresco representing Music, the heads of the women possess charming sweetness ; his voluptuousness is aristocratic, and often refined ; the diversion of fetes, the variety and the brilliancy of a smiUng seducing beauty more readily respond to his VERONESE. 341 mind than the force and simplicity of bodies and of athletic actions. He himself saluted Titian with respect " as the father of art," while Titian, on the square of San-Marco, affectionately embraced him, recognizing io bim the head of a new generation. CHAPTEK II. LAGO UI GAKD A.- 'MILiVN.— STREETS AND CHARACTERS.— THE CATHK DRAL.— MYSTIC FIGURES AND VEGETAL ANALOGIES OF TUB GOTHIC— SAN AMBROGIO. Near Desenzano we come in sight of the Lago di Garcia. It is quite blue, of that strange blue peculiar to rocky depths ; rugged mountains, marbled with glit- tering snow, enclose it within their curves and advance their promontories into the middle of the lake. With all their asperities they look genial ; an azure veil, as aerial and delicate as the finest gauze, envelops their nudity and tempers their rudeness. After leaving Ye- rona they are visible only through this veil. This soft azure occupies the half of space ; the rest is a tender and charming green prairie, rendered still softer by the faint yellow tinge overspreading the spring growth with the freshness of new being. At Desenzano the train stops on the very margin of the lake. Its lustrous slaty surface buries itseK between two long rocky shores seeming to be the embossed and jagged sides of a fantastic river. It forms, indeed, the marble ewer into which, before they decline, the Alps collects and retains its springs. On the projections of this shore we see villages, churches and ancient fort- resses extending down into the water, and, in the background, a loftier wall lifting into the sky its snowy fringe silvered with sunlight. Nothing can be gayer and nobler. From the lake to the firmament all these azure tints melt into each other graduated by diversi- ties of distance and reminding one of the blue rocky landscapes which Leonardo gives in the backgrounds of his pictures. MILAN. 343 The rest of the country as far as Milan is a vast orchard replete with crops, artificial fields and fruit- trees, where the mulberry, already quite green, rounds its tops amidst the vines and where petty canals bear life to the vegetation, so blooming and so prolific as to suggest an idea of superabundant prosperity ; but in order to reKeve this fertility of any vulgar or monoto- nous aspect, the Alps rise on the right in the evening glow, like a file of vast stationary clouds. Milan, May 4. — One realizes that he is in a rich and gay land. The city is grand and even luxurious with its monumental gates and broad streets lined with palaces, full of vehicles and lively without being fever- ish like Paris or London. It is situated on a plain ; the lakes, canals and river easily supply it with pro- visions fi'om the well-cultivated and generously pro- ductive country. Its buildings are as pleasing as its environs. You enter the waiting-rooms of a railroad station ; you see between the mouldings and their ornaments an azure ceiling full of floating clouds. The cafes are well patronized ; ices and coffee cost four or five sous ; an omnibus fare is two sous. Admission to both of the operas is but one or two francs ; common people and the women are quite numerous in the par- terre. Many of the women are beautiful, and almost all gay and good-humored ; they walk well, having a spruce and attractive air ; with their lively physiogno- my, fine, cleanly chiselled head, and vibrating sonorous accent they stand out instantaneously in bold relief. Nothing can be prettier than the black veil serving as a coiffure; a circle of silver bodkins placed around the cliignon forms a crown. Stendhal, who lived here a long time, says that this cit}^ is the land of good-nature and pleasure : to regard labor and serious preoccupa- tions as a load to be reduced as much as possible, to enjoy themselves, to laugh, to go on country pic-nics, to get in love and not in sighing fashion, such is the 344 LOMBAEDY. way in which they regard life. I have had two or three interesting conversations, in this connection, with my travelling companions ; all of them terminated in the same creed- One of these, half-bourgeois, another a laAvyer, each remarked to me : " Ho la sventura cfessere ammogliato, — it is true I married my wife for love and that she is pretty and prudent, but I have lost my Hberty." A transient visitor like myself can have no opinion on social matters ; he can only talk about monuments. There are three conspicuous ones at Milan — the cathe- dral and two picture galleries. The cathedral, at the first sight, is bewildering, Gothic art, transported entire into Italy at the close of the middle ages,^ attains at once its triumph and its extravagance. Never had it been seen so pointed, so highly embroidered, so complex, so overcharged, so strongly resembling a piece of jewelry ; and as, instead of coarse and lifeless stone, it here takes for its material the beautiful lustrous Italian marble, it becomes a pure chased gem as precious through its substance as through the labor bestowed on it. The whole church seems to be a colossal and magnificent crystallization, so splen- didly do its forest of spires, its intersections of mould- ings, its population of statues, its fringes of fretted, hollowed, embroidered and open marblework, ascend in multiple and interminable bright forms against the pure blue sky. Truly is it the mystic candelabra of visions and legends, with a hundred thousand branches bristling and overflowing with sorrowing thorns and ecstatic roses, with angels, virgins, and martyrs upon every flower and on every thorn, with infinite myriads of the triumphant Church springing from the ground pyramidically even into the azure, with its millions of blended and vibrating voices mounting upward in a * Begun in 1386. Its architects were Germans and FrenchmeiL THE CATHEDEAL. 345 single shout, hosannali ! Moved by such sentiments we quicMj comprehend why architecture viohited the ordinary conditions of matter and of its endurance. It no longer has an end of its own ; little does it care whether it be a soHd or a fragile construction ; it is not a shelter but an expression ; it does not concern itseli with present fragility nor with the restorations of the future ; it is born of a sublime frenzy and constitutes a sublime frenzy ; so much the worse for the stone that disintegrates and for generations that are to commence the work anew. The object is to manifest an intense reverie and a unique transport ; a certain moment in life is worth all the rest of hfe put together. The mystic philosophers of the early centuries sacrificed Everything to the hope of once or twice transcending in the course of so many long years the limits of human existence and of being translated for an instant up to the ineffable One, the source of the universe. We enter, and the impression deepens. What a difference between the rehgious power of such a church and that of St. Peter's at Borne ! One exclaims to him- self, this is the true christian temple ! Four rows of enormous eight-sided pillars, close together, seem like a serried hedge of gigantic oaks. Their strange capi- tals, bristling with a fantastic vegetation of pinnacles, canopies, foliated niches and statues, are hke venerable trunks crowned with delicate and pendent mosses. They spread out in great branches meeting in the vault overhead, the intervals of the arches being filled with an inextricable network of foliage, thorny sprigs and light branches, twining and intertwining, and figuring the aerial dome of a mighty forest. As in a great wood, the lateral aisles are almost equal in height to that of the centre, and, on all sides, at equal distances apart, one sees ascending around him the secular colonnades. Here truly is the ancient germanic forest, as if a reminiscence of the rehgious groves of Irmensul. Lighi 346 LOMBAEDY. pours in transformed by green, yellow and purpk panes, as if through the red and orange tints of autumnal leaves. This, certainly, is a complete archi- tecture like that of Greece, having, like that of Greece, its root in vegetable forms. The Greek takes the trunk of the tree, dressed, for his type ; the German the en- tire tree with all its leaves and branches. True archi- tecture, perhaps, always springs out of vegetal nature, and each zone may have its own edifices as well as plants; in this way oriental architectures might be comprehended, — the vague idea of the slender palm and of its bouquet of leaves with the Arabs, and the vague idea of the colossal, prolific, dilated and brist- ling vegetation of India. In any event I have never seen a church in which the aspect of northern forests was more striking, or where one more involuntarily imagines long alleys of trunks terminating in glimpses of daylight, curved branches meeting in acute angles, domes of irregular and commingling foliage, universal shade scattered with lights through colored and di- aphanous leaves. Sometimes a section of yellow panes, through which the sun darts, launches into the obscu- rity its shower of rays and a portion of the nave glows like a luminous glade. A vast rosace behind the choir, a window with tortuous branchings above the entrance, shimmer with the tints of amethyst, ruby, emerald and topaz like leafy labyrinths in which lights from above break in and diffuse themselves in shifting radiance. Near the sacristy a small door-top, fastened against the wall, exposes an infinity of intersecting mouldings sim- ilar to the dehcate meshes of some marvellous twining and climbing plant. A daj^ might be passed here as in a forest, the mind as calm and as occupied in the presence of grandeurs as solemn as those of nature, before caprices as fascinating, amidst the same inter- mingling of sublime monotony and inexhaustible fecundity, before contrasts and metamorphoses of light THE CATHEDIIAL. 847 as ricli and as nnexpecliHl. A mystic reverie, combined with a fresh sentiment of northern nature, such is the source of gothic architecture. At the second look one feels the exaggerations and the incongruities. The gothic is of the late epoch and is inferior to that of Assisi ; outside, especially, the grand lines disappear under the ornamentation. You see nothing but pinnacles and statues. Many of these statues are of the seventeenth century, sentimental and gesticulating, in the taste of Bernini ; the main windows of the fa(;ade bear the imprint of the Kenaissance and constitute a blemish. In the interior St. Charles Bor- romeo and his successors have in several places plas- tered it with the affectations of the decadence. A monument like this transcends man's forces ; five hun- dred years of labor has been bestowed on it, and it is not finished yet. When a work requires so long a time for its completion the inevitable revolutions of the mental state leave on it their discordant traces : here appears that true characteristic of the middle ages, the disproportion between desire and power. Criticism, however, before such a work is out of place. One drives it from his mind like an intruder; it remains on the threshold and does not soon attempt to re-enter. The eyes of their own accord discard ugl}" features ; in order to prolong their pleasure they fix themselves on some of the tombs of the great century, that of Cardi- nal Carraciulo (1538) and especially, before the Chapel of the Presentation, that of the sculptor Bambaja, ai: unknown man of the time of Michael Angelo. The diminutive Virgin is ascending a flight of steps amongst superb, erect forms of men and women ; one meagre old man is looking at her, and his bony head, in its enormous frizzled beard, has a spirited and wild aspect ; a woman on the left, between the columns, has the ani- mated beauty of the most blooming youth. Farther on, another Virgin between two female saints is a mas- 848 LOMBAKDY. terpiece of simplicity and force. We do not know and cannot fully estimate tlie genius of the Renaissance ; Italy has only exported, or allowed to be taken, frag ments of its work; books have popularized a few names ; but, for the sake of abridgment, others have ])een omitted. Below, and by the side of great known names, is a multitude of others equal to them. Another celebrated church is cited, that of San- Ambrogio, founded in the fourth century by St. Ambrose and completed or restored later in the Roman style, supplied with gothic arches toward the year 1300 and strewn with divers bits — doors, pulpit and altar decora- tions — during the intermediary ages. An oblong court precedes it through a double portico. A large square tower flanks it with its sombre and reddened mass. Remnants of sculpture plastered on the wall render the porticoes a sort of defaced and incoherent memorial. The old edifice itself raises its fretted gable upon a double story of arcades. The portal is peculiar, being striped and mottled with fine stone ornaments, consist- ing of networks of thread, rosaces, and of small squares filled with foliage ; on the columns we see crosses, heads and bodies of animals, a decoration of an unknown species.* These works of the darkest cen- turies of the middle ages always, after the first repulsion, leaA'e a powerful impression. We feel in them, as in the saints' legends accumulated from the seventh to the tenth cen turies, the bewilderment of an appalled understand- ing, the awkwardness of clumsy hands, the alteration and disY. architecture if not a memorial which a passing genera- tion anxiously erects to itself in order to prolong its waning thought by a sepulchre as evanescent as this thought ? On the contrary before heaven, amidst mountains and waters, we feel as if we stood in the presence of perfect and perennial beings. No accident has befallen them, they are the same as at the first day (n^ery year the same spring sends forth to them from copious sources pith and vigor ; our exhaustion is re- stored by their might and beneath their tranquillity our restlessness subsides. In them appears the uniform power evolved by the variety and transformation of things, the great fruitful and genial mother whom nothing disturbs because beyond her there is nothing. Then from the soul departs an unknown and profound sensation ; its inmost recesses then appear ; the in- numerable lines with which life has invested it, its wrecks of passion and of hope, all the human dross which has accumulated on its surface is dissolved and fades away ; it reappears in its simplicity ; it revives the instinct of former days, the vague montonous words which formerly placed it in communion with the gods, with those natural gods who live in all things ; it feels that all the words it has since spoken or heard are but confused babbhngs, a mental concussion, a street noise, and that if there is one healthy and desirable moment it is that when, quitting the vexations of its so- journ, it perceives, as venerated sages have said, the harmony of the spheres, that is to say the palpitation of the eternal universe. The road winds up the declivities, and toward Isella, tlie mountains become bare and crowded. Walls of cliff fifteen hundred feet high enclose the route within their defiles. Their yellow bases, blackened by the exudations of the springs, their towers, their chaos of ieformed and corroded ruins, seem to be the crumbled SCENERY. 377 masses of myriads of cathedrals. One vainly recurs to memory or to his dreams for forms of this kind ; you imagine some enormous trunk hacked by the axe of a blind colossus whose children, more feeble, afterward approach with pruning-hooks a hundred feet long and full of obstinate fury, in order to add other gashes to the mighty blows of their father. It would require similar rage and insanity to explain these grand pre- cipitous breaches, these sudden chasms, these over- hanging crests and needles, this monstrous wildness ol disorder. Trains of tarnished frost creep about the hollows, each one melting and then flowing away ; thus on all sides do the streams collect and intersect each other, at one time sinuous and clinging to the brown sides, at another scattered in cascades and exposing in the air their feathery foam. In the distance smoke is ascending and the torrent fights its way grumbling be- tween the rocky paHsades. We still ascend and the snow glitters between the peaks ; sometimes it whitens an entire declivity and when the sun shines on it its brightness is so vivid that the eyes are bhnded by it. The defile widens and sloping fields spread out in their snowy shroud. All, however, is not barren : armies of larches climb in dis- order and with an air of resignation to the assault of the cliffs ; their fresh buds give them a peculiar yellow dress; a few morose firs spot them with their black cones ; they mount upward in rows among d}^ng trunks and bodies of mutilated trees and all the ravagea of avalanches ; like the survivors on a battle-field they ' look as if they knew that they were still to fight again and were aware of all the suffering that awaits them. On the summit, near the hospice and Tillage of the Simplon extends a mournful plateau ploughed with fur- rows all bedimmed with melting snows like an aban- doned, devastated cemetery. Here is the boundary 3'J8 LOMBAEDT. between two regions and it seems as if it were the boundary between two worlds ; the dazzling peaks are lost in the whiteness of the clouds, so that one no longer knows where the earth ends and where the skj begins INDEX. [See remarks preceding Index of volume on Rome and Naples. A. 'Abel 8acrificini ; by Spinello d'Arezzo. 63 ; by the Orcagnas. 64-6 ; by Gozzoli, 69 ; by Giotto, 104, 200-2 ; by Taddeo Gaddi, 104; by S. Memmi, 106; by Va sari, 146 ; by Mante^na, 202 Froissart, quoted, 64 o. Oabriello, Marco Trifone, type of the Patrician Ruler, 286 Gaddi, Angiolo, 108 Gaddi, Taddeo— Fresco by, 104; 'Philos- ophy,' 106 ; Views of Art, 108 Galileo, Tomb of. 103 Garibaldi — Number of Volunteers under him. 28 : Portraits of, 198 ; Popularity of, 258, 370 Geloisa, 77 Gesuiti, Church of the, 25.3-4 Gesuati, Church of the, 253 Ghiberti — Love of the Antique, 95 ; Works, 96-7 ; Education in the Gold- -6 Tlie Giudecca, 2.17; Ta.xation, 257' Slaves' Quav, 260; Decline of, 2«52 ; Courtezans, ■26:)-6 ; The Lido, 2()8-T0 Climate and Soil, '272 ; Compared with Flanders, 273-6 ; Ancient Heroism of, 277 ; Independence of, 278 ; Academy of tlie Fine Arts, 281, 309; Patrician Sentiment, 285; Amusements of the •Magnifici,' 287 j Aretino, 287-93; Al- bergo, 323 ; Spirit of Venetian Art, 326-7 Venice Queen,' by Veronese, 290 Venner, Antonio, Doge, Tomb of, 244 '1 ernes,' by Botticelli, 130 ; '— de ilcd- iCi,' 140; •— with the Doge,' by Titian, 141 ; Greek, 144 Verocchio— Begins as Goldsmith, 117; Statue of a Child, 146 ; Works in Sau Lorenzo, 147; Statue of CoUeoni, 242 Verona— Aspect of, 328; The Amphi- theatre, 329 ; Lombard Architecture of, 330; the Duomo, 330 ; Paintings in, 338-41 ; (see Churches.) Veronese, Paul — Angels in San Giustina, 204; Decorator of the Ducal Palace 223; 'Adoration of the Mao:i,' 259: ''Grisailles,'' 295; Character ofhis art, 299 ; 'Rape of Europa.' 300 ; 'Repast at the House of Levi,' 'Apostles on the Clouds,' 'Annunciation,' 310; Portrait of Pasio Guariento, 3:)9 ; 'Music,' 340 ; Homage of Titian, 341 ; Works in the Brera, 358 Vesale, Andrea, Portrait of, by Titian, 156 'Vie de Jesus,' 36, 198 Victor Emmanuel, 78 Victor Hugo, 198 Villani, The, 67 Vinci, Leonardo da, 53, 117, Nun,' 1.55 ; '^lona Lisa, Works of, in Milan, 350-3 ; 'Last Sup- per,' 350; 'Duke Sforza,' 351 ; Studiea in the Brera Gallery, 351 ; in the An- brosian Libraiy, 351 ; Compared wih Raphael and M. Angelo, 351-2 ; Infla- ence of on Contemporary Artists, 353 Virgil. 2 Virgin, The. (See Madonna.) Virginia de Leyva, 156 'Virtue triumphant over Vice,' by JoLl of Bologna, 146 'Virtues,' by Pordenone, 223 'Visitation,' by Titian, 303 'Vision of Ezeldel,' by Raphael, 165 'Vita Nuova,' 22 Vitrnvius, 222 Vivarini, The, 281 Voltaire, 78 w. White Penitents of Italy, 66 Wellington, Duke of, quoted, 974 Z. Zamoiska, Countess, Tomb of^ lOi Zeno, Carlo, 277, 279 122; 156, 'The .3.54; ^AY 23 1904